


To Boldly Go

by xylophones



Series: Zero Gravity 'verse [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Space, Badass Katsuki Yuuri, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Getting Together, Light Angst, M/M, Oblivious Katsuki Yuuri, Outer Space, Pining, Romance, Slow Burn, Star Trek AU, Starfleet, Starfleet Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-15 09:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylophones/pseuds/xylophones
Summary: “Yuuri!” Viktor calls. “I’ve come to rescue you!”Yuuri stares at him blankly. He gestures to the various unconscious space pirates with his recently discharged phaser.“Oh, Captain,” he deadpans. “Save me.”Or:A year in the life of badass science officer Yuuri Katsuki, Captain Viktor “Team Mom” Nikiforov, and simultaneously the best crew andworstcrew in Starfleet history.(No prior Star Trek knowledge needed! It’s a loose AU!)





	1. bad decisions & snake monsters

**Author's Note:**

> im weak for space AUs my dudes
> 
> okay quick disclaimer: this is a very VERY loose au!! it doesn't really follow star trek rules at all i mostly just borrowed names and the general starfleet structure SO you don't need to know really anything about star trek if you wanna read this <3
> 
> alright here's chapter 1/3 have fun!!
> 
> i'm over [here on tumblr](https://somethingsnotquitewrite.tumblr.com) if you have any questions

 

 

 

 

* * *

  i.

* * *

  

Yuuri regrets every decision he’s ever made leading up to this point.

He’s currently sprinting through a thick jungle, dodging phaser blasts and trying not to think about how much of his bare skin is brushing against alien plants of unknown toxicity levels. The thick waxy leaves of the trees cling to him, suffocating, until Yuuri wrenches away from their grasp and almost directly into the path of a phaser blast. He’s sweaty and tired and he just wants to go back to the ship, _where he’s supposed to be,_ supervising the crew and conducting science experiments. Not running for his life on an unexplored planet, pursued by a large group of heavily armed Galra.  

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a typical day at work.

“Sara!” Yuuri barks into his tricorder. “Can you beam me up if I get out of the jungle? I think they’re gaining on me.”

“Hold on,” Sara says, her voice crackling over the weak signal. “We’re picking up the rest of the landing party. Just wait a second, the Captain is coming to get you.”

Yuuri curses.

“What? No! He’s useless,” he gasps, throwing a quick look over his shoulder. “Tell him not to come! Tell him I’m dead!”

“Yuuri, really, now isn’t the time to–”

Yuuri yelps as a phaser blast whizzes past a little too close, causing him to drop his tricorder. It’s immediately swallowed up by the thick carpet of the jungle floor. Perfect.

He reaches into his holster and pulls out his phaser, making sure it’s set to stun. He swerves right suddenly, spotting a clearing in his peripheral vision. He’s close enough to where he dropped his tricorder that Sara should be able to beam him up.

The clearing turns out to be the edge of a cliff. It’s a vertical drop down from the jungle Yuuri has just clawed his way out of to a misty, jagged chasm. Yuuri looks around wildly and realizes too late that he has nowhere else to go. His enemies have just broken through the edge of the trees and there’s nothing to take cover behind.

Today is _not_ Yuuri’s day.

Yuuri stops and thinks. He goes through his options, mind racing to try to come up with a scenario in which he doesn’t end up dead. If Sara hasn’t beamed him up by now it’s likely that she isn’t able to lock onto his signature, so that’s not an option. He can’t run, he’s exhausted and there’s nowhere to to. He briefly entertains the idea of fighting back but it’s six-to-one and Yuuri doesn’t like those odds. It looks like Yuuri is going to have to talk his way out.

“Wait!” Yuuri calls in mangled Galran, eternally grateful that Leo has taught him the basics of communication in most languages. “Stop!”

The fact that Yuuri has spoken in their native tongue seems to surprise the Galra enough that they don’t shoot him right away. Yuuri counts that as a win.

“You can speak our language?” one of them–- probably the leader––says.

“Um, yes?” Yuuri clears his throat and pushes his shoulders back, feigning confidence. “Yes. So, let’s talk before you try to shoot me again.”

“Ha! You are funny, Starfleet scum!” the Galra laughs, raising his weapon again. “Too bad.”

Suddenly, Yuuri hears the rumble of a familiar engine coming from behind him. He ducks just in time for Viktor’s jet to shoot out from the canyon and bowl over the Galra, nearly crashing into the treeline in the process.

“Yuuri!” Viktor shouts, jumping out of the pilot’s chair as soon as he’s landed. “It’s okay now, I’m here!”

He flashes Yuuri his signature Prince Charming smile. Yuuri would normally find it devastating, but right now he’s too busy lifting his phaser to shoot out the two Galra that weren’t knocked out by Viktor’s jet. They hit the ground before they can even think about raising their weapons in Viktor’s direction.

“Watch your back,” Yuuri grumbles, striding forward towards Viktor. “Useless.”

“Hey! I just saved you! Don’t I get a thank you? Yuuri? What are you–” Viktor stammers as Yuuri marches right up to him and takes his face into his hands, gently rolling his head back and forth.

“Uh– Yuuri?”

“I’m making sure you didn’t fracture your neck in the crash,” Yuuri says, sliding his hands down Viktor’s shoulders, pressing lightly to test for any sprains, fingers skimming lightly along his clavicle. “We’ll have Seung-gil give you a full check-up once we get back but I don’t want you crashing our ship because you’re too much of an idiot to realize that you’re injured.”

“R-Right! Of course!” Viktor laughs, high pitched. Yuuri ignores how the slight flush of Viktor’s skin brings out his adorable freckles. He’s also slightly out of breath. Yuuri chalks it up to adrenaline from the crash.

“I think you’re okay,” Yuuri announces, taking a step back.

“Are you sure? Maybe you should check again, my back kind of hurts. Also, my face is kind of sore! And I think there’s something wrong with my hand and we don’t have anything to use as a splint so maybe you should hold it for me?”

Yuuri turns away, tuning out whatever it is Viktor is saying. He’ll probably be embarrassed about straight up groping his captain later, but for now they need to secure the Galra so they can be transported back to the Federation for trial. Mining for resources on a planet in a protected system is against the Federation’s laws for the preservation of the greater universe’s biodiversity. They’ll pay a heavy price. It’s probably a good thing that the Enterprise just happened to stumble upon them, even if Yuuri is annoyed that he didn’t get to finish taking plant samples.

“Vitya,” Yuuri calls over his shoulder as he drags one of the Galra bodies towards Viktor’s jet. “do you have any handcuffs?”

“What?”

Yuuri sighs, impatient.

“Oh, for the Galra. Yes! Hold on,” Viktor says, scrambling back up into the pilot's seat to procure six sets of Starfleet’s official metal limb restraints. Why Starfleet feels the need to stamp their logo on everything, down to the _handcuffs_ , is beyond Yuuri. He takes them and together he and Viktor make quick work of restraining the Galra and hauling them into Viktor’s jet.

Yuuri crashes while Viktor readies the jet for takeoff. He slumps into the co-pilot seat, suddenly exhausted. He might have felt confident in the heat of the moment but now that the immediate danger has passed, Yuuri can feel all his doubt and anxieties seeping back in,a creeping moss clouding his head. Viktor, somehow, seems to sense this.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asks, hands stilling on the control panel.

Yuuri nods. “Just tired.”

Viktor looks at him for a long moment before he turns back to the controls, hands flying over them with a renewed speed.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back home in no time,” he says reassuringly, lips quirking up. “You were amazing out there, Yuuri. And your aim! You never fail to surprise me, my cute little science officer.”

Yuuri blushes.

“I’m first officer for a reason,” he mumbles, rolling his eyes despite the blush spreading across his cheeks. “I know how to fight. You _know_ I know how to fight.”

“I know,” Viktor says fondly. “And I know that you don’t like to.”

“I don’t,” Yuuri confirms, and then admits: “But it’s not so bad when I have you as back up.”

Viktor turns his face away as he pulls the spacecraft up and out of the atmosphere but Yuuri can see the pleased smile spreading across his face.

Viktor gets them back to the Enterprise in no time, the jet cutting across the distance so smoothly that Yuuri almost falls asleep. Viktor fills him in the entire way, informing him that Leo has already contacted Starfleet and that the rest of the landing party was beamed up safely, thanks to Sara.  

Mila and Yurio greet them as soon as they set the jet down in one of the Enterprise’s hangars. They’re accompanied by a small group of security officers, ready to transport the Galra to the Enterprise’s few holding cells.

“Mila!” Viktor sings, gesturing towards the still incapacitated Galra. “I brought you prisoners!”

Mila laughs at Viktor’s theatrics, her red hair almost as bright as her red security uniform under the bright lights of the hangar. She gestures for her crew to gather the prisoners up for detainment.

“Thanks, I was starting to feel useless. It’s been an entire week since you’ve provoked anyone enough for us to need our holding cells,” she says dryly, punching Viktor in the arm.

“I didn’t provoke them this time!”

“Katsudon!” Yurio barks suddenly, glaring. “You didn’t die. Good job.”

“Thank… you?” Yuuri smiles, certain that this will be the closest thing to a compliment that little Yurio will ever bestow upon him. “Make sure that the Galra are comfortable, okay? Just because they tried to kill me doesn’t mean they aren’t living beings.”

“Why are you _so_ –?!” Yurio stops and rolls his eyes. “Nevermind. Yeah, I’ll make sure they’re okay, it’s my job, you know.”

Yurio turns on his heel and follows the rest of the security officers, bossing them around like he isn’t the youngest and lowest ranked among them. To his credit, the rest of the officers actually follow his orders. Yuuri thinks that they need to promote him.

“Wow,” Mila whistles. “You know, he doesn’t even follow my orders, and I’m Chief of Security. Anyway, if that’s all you should get down to the medbay before Seung-gil throws another fit. Chris is taking us back to the Anastasia starbase and Guang Hong is already working on an incident report. I’ll make sure to send Leo down to start translating the Galra’s statements and rights as soon as they’re conscious again.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri smiles softly. “And–?’

“The samples? Phichit and Georgi are taking care of whatever’s left from the landing party. Everything’s okay, Commander, just go get your medical evaluation and get some rest.”

“Alright,” Yuuri sighs, satisfied to see his ship running so smoothly despite all the chaos that today has brought. He tugs Viktor along towards the medbay, the captain chattering nonstop as they make their way through the halls. Yuuri is impossibly fond.

He loves his job, his crew, his ship, and, most of all, his captain.

 

 

 

 

Thinking back on it, Yuuri doesn’t know why he’s surprised that his life ended up like this.

 

 

* * *

ii.

* * *

 

Yuuri will never forget the first day he met Viktor Nikiforov because it’s also the first day he almost died doing something stupid. This seems to be a common trend with the two of them.

Yuuri was a freshman at the Academy, bright eyed and eager to prove himself worthy of his cadet uniform. He was a thousand miles away from home, in a new country, and surrounded by so many different cultures it made his head spin. He just met Phichit Chulanont, another freshman, but a full three years younger than him, the youngest person to ever be admitted into Starfleet’s science officer program. They had only known each other for a few weeks, but already they were talking about rooming together next semester. All of Yuuri’s classes were exciting and the library was gigantic. The campus was beautiful, perched at the edge of the San Francisco bay, a sprawling mass of concrete and steel nestled comfortably amongst the lush redwoods and dark waves.  He loved it here.

Halfway through his second semester he finds out about the Grand Prix Flight Test.

“It’s an obstacle course, basically,” his physics professor explains, leading the class through the hallways and out of the physics building. They walk out to the airfield where their professor herds them into a raised observation building.

“It’s designed to test pilots mostly. Us science officers use it to observe the effect of the forces on different types of space crafts.”

Yuuri watches with wide eyes from behind three feet of bulletproof glass as two fighter jets whizz past. They do some complicated maneuvers, dodging what looks to be paintballs being fired from cannons placed around the field. Yuuri cranes his neck to watch as the two planes suddenly pull upwards, spiraling higher and higher until one of them eventually pulls away. The other one continues to climb until Yuuri can barely see it, hovering somewhere miles above their heads.

It seems to stop for a moment, suspended in midair until it comes crashing back towards the Earth.

Yuuri watches in fascination and horror as the craft continues to fall. His classmates murmur anxiously, but their professor shushes them.

“Don’t worry,” she says, waving a hand. “Nikiforov knows what he’s doing.”

Just before the jet hits the ground it pulls up, shooting off to the left instead of shattering into a million, fiery pieces. It lands as Yuuri’s classmates cheer, relieved to not have witnessed an excruciating death. Yuuri’s professor begins to lecture on what they just saw.

She’s just beginning to get into the way that friction from the air affected the flight when the door to the observation room opens.

“Ah, Viktor! Perfect timing!”

Yuuri turns just in time to see perfection personified slip in through the door. The man– Viktor?– smiles at Yuuri’s professor. He’s tall with broad shoulders that fill out his flight suit nicely and high, delicate cheekbones. He steps further into the room, tossing his silver hair out of his eyes. Yuuri swears that they sparkle.

It’s like a bad movie. Yuuri is so disappointed in himself for falling for it.

“Professor Kiyoko! How’s your wife?”

“She’s well, surprising considering the heartattack you gave her during hover tests last week.”

“Ah,” the pilot says, bringing a hand up to rub the back of his neck. “That was an accident, I swear.”

“Mhmm,” she tsks, shaking her head fondly. “Class, this is Viktor Nikiforov. He’s currently in his third year training to become a pilot.”

“Hello, class!”

“We just watched you finish that last test. A little sticky on the uptake this time, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but I made it through, didn’t I?” Viktor says smirking. Yuuri thinks he’s going to pass out.

Professor Kiyoko whistles, turning back to the class. “Viktor currently holds the Starfleet Academy record for highest score on the Grand Prix Flight Test.”

“Well,” Viktor says with a shrug. “What can I say? I’m a good pilot.”

“You could be better,” Yuuri says before he can stop himself. He’s immediately mortified.

The entire class, Professor Kiyoko, and Viktor “Perfect” Nikiforov all turn to look at him. Yuuri wishes the ground would swallow him up.

“I just– I mean!” Yuuri scrambles. “I don’t mean that you’re a _bad_ pilot! Y-You’re amazing! That was really cool! I just meant- uh.”

“You have some suggestions, Katsuki?” Professor Kiyoko questions, smiling encouragingly. She turns back to Viktor. “Yuuri is one of the brightest students I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaching.”

“Oh?”  Viktor purrs, stalking closer. “Any tips, _Yuuri_?”

“Um,” Yuuri squeaks. Viktor crowds into his personal space.

“I’m listening.”

“W-Well,” Yuuri starts, and then he looks away and focuses on the physics, the science behind flying and not on Perfect Viktor Nikiforov and his perfect blue eyes. He systematically lays out every part of the test that Viktor could have improved on, offering suggestions on how to work _with_ physics instead of against it. By the time he’s done with his mini speech Professor Kiyoko is beaming proudly and Viktor looks gobsmacked.

“Wow,” he breathes out. “You’re something else, aren’t you, Yuuri Katsuki?”

“I-It’s just physics,” Yuuri mumbles, shuffling his feet. “And I’m j-just Yuuri.”

“Okay, Just Yuuri,” Viktor says, smiling. “Why don’t you show me how it works?”

“What?”

“Show me. Ride shotgun, tell me how to work– what did you just say? With? Show me how to work _with_ physics.”

Yuuri gapes.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Viktor pouts. Yuuri is such a goner.

“P-Professor?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” she says. Yuuri feels betrayed.

“But, the added weight?”

“Factor that in, I know you can do it.”

Yuuri sighs. He looks up at Viktor. His sky blue eyes and upturned lips are like the sun.

“Yeah, okay. Where do I suit up?”

Twenty minutes later Yuuri is wearing an uncomfortably tight flight suit and a radio headset. He curls himself into the passenger seat of Viktor’s jet, apparently named Makkachin. He watches wearily as Viktor flips a bunch of switches and turns some knobs, reading off numbers into his own headset to double check with flight control. Yuuri struggles not to panic.

“Okay, Yuuri!” Viktor says. “We’re good to go! Ready?”

Yuuri takes a deep breath. He thinks about the science behind it, not about the mass of metal and highly flammable jet fuel he’s sitting on.

“Ready.”

The first half goes smoothly. They cut through the air like a shark, sleek and powerful, the hum of the engines low in the background. Yuuri and Viktor go back and forth, clicking effortlessly. They fill the comm with a constant stream of _pull up a bit_ and _should I ease up on acceleration_ and _tilt left about 45 degrees_. Yuuri doesn’t think before he speaks, doesn’t second guess himself. It’s perfect.

It’s perfect right up until they get to the drop.

“Keep going,” Yuuri says, watching the speed gauge as they climb higher and higher up into the stratosphere.

“Are you sure? I’ve never gone so far, the fall–”

“Just a little further, I’ll tell you when to pull up when we drop. Just a little more and– there it is. Let go.”

Viktor lets go. They fall.

Yuuri watches the ground rush up towards them. He sees Viktor glance at him nervously from the corner of his eye.

“Yuuri, I have to pull up soon.”

“Not yet,” Yuuri says, eyes flickering back and forth from the Earth to the dashboard.

“Yuuri–”

“Almost!”

“We’re gonna crash!”

“No,” Yuuri says firmly, shaking his head. “We’ll make it.”

“We won’t–”

“Trust me, Viktor!”

Yuuri sees Viktor grip the control wheel with white knuckles, but he doesn’t pull up yet.

“When you bring us up, bounce the thrusters once,” Yuuri says as he scans the dashboard gauges one more time.

“Now!”

They barely scrape by, landing a little roughly, but in one piece. Yuuri sighs, relieved that he hadn’t messed up and killed them both. He laughs, shakily and turns towards Viktor.

Viktor just stares at him.

Flight control informs them that they beat Viktor’s previous record by a whopping fifty points. One of the voices complains that there’s no way that anyone can top that now. Yuuri tries not to take it as a challenge. They barely survived this last run, now’s not the time to be getting competitive. Viktor hasn’t said anything yet.

“Um, Viktor? Are you okay?”

Yuuri is starting to worry. Has he offended Viktor somehow? Maybe he shouldn’t have flown with him.

“Viktor?”

Viktor smiles then, slow and shaky.  

“ _Yuuri Katsuki,_ ” Viktor breathes out. “Please, _please,_ be my co-pilot.”

Yuuri flushes. He removes his headset and unbuckles his seatbelt, fidgeting. “I’m not a pilot.”

“We’ll get you licensed. I can pull some strings to get you into the program, just– please,” Viktor looks at him, eyes wide and face flushed, slightly out of breath. “Please.”

“Viktor, I can’t just–”

“You felt it, right? It was like– like a connection. That was amazing, Yuuri, _you’re_ amazing. We make a great team.”

“Yeah, I felt it,” Yuuri concedes, a smile blooming across his face. “We do make a pretty good team, don’t we?”

Viktor continues to stare at him with what can only be described as childlike wonder. Yuuri notices that his hands are shaking.

“Uh, shouldn’t we get out now? So they can do some maintenance on Makkachin?”

“What?” Viktor snaps out of his daze. “Oh! Yes, let’s– I need to return you to Professor Kiyoko.”

While he changes back into his cadet uniform Yuuri feels Viktor’s eyes on him. He tries not to feel self conscious, tries not to think about Viktor begging Yuuri to switch programs after _one_ flight together. He fails miserably.

“That was the single _stupidest_ thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Professor Kiyoko tells them as soon as they make it back to the observation room. “How did you do it?”

“It’s just physics,” Viktor says with a grin. He nudges Yuuri lightly. “You’ve got a real genius here, Professor.”

Yuuri ducks his head. Now that the adrenaline has worn off he’s starting to feel unbalanced.

“That was incredible,” Professor Kiyoko says. “Katsuki, I’m assigning you to shadow Viktor for the rest of the year. You can use him as your final project.”

“W-What?” Yuuri’s head snaps up.

“Yuuri! This is great! You’re my new partner in crime!”

Yuuri shadows Viktor for two years. It’s the best two years of Yuuri’s life. They beat their own record twice, technically three times, but that first time doesn’t count officially because Yuuri wasn’t registered as a flight assistant at the time. Viktor never manages to convince Yuuri to switch programs, but that hardly matters when he bases his physics projects on Viktor every semester. Viktor never gets a co-pilot, though that hardly matters when it’s clear that Viktor has his sights set on position’s higher than just piloting spacecrafts.  

In his senior year, Viktor jokes about purposefully failing all his classes so he can stay behind with Yuuri. Yuuri rolls his eyes.

“I’ll wait for you,” Viktor promises on his graduation day, clutching Yuuri close to his chest. His new uniform is a vibrant yellow, fitting for someone who shines as brightly as Viktor does.

“Vitya, don’t,” Yuuri smile is a little wobbly. “You’re going to be great. You don’t need to wait for anyone, least of all me.”

“I will,” he says firmly, arms tightening around Yuuri. “Give me– How many years do you have left? You’re going for a double specialization, right? Give me five years. I’ll be a Captain. I’ll get us a ship, I promise.”

“Slow down there, Ensign,” Yuuri chuckles wetly. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, you just graduated.”

Viktor shakes his head, determined. “I’ll do it. I’ll become a Captain and then I’ll wait for you to graduate. You’re gonna be my First Officer, Yuuri, just you wait.”

Yuuri pulls back, eyes a little damp but grinning so widely he thinks his face might split. “Okay, Captain. I’ll look forward to it.”

“Just you wait,” Viktor says again, pulling Yuuri back into the hug. “We’re gonna rule the galaxy together.”

Six years later, Yuuri starts his first day as the First Officer to Viktor Nikiforov, Captain of the USS Enterprise.

 

 

* * *

 iii.

* * *

 

Navigation alerts them to the discovery of a new planet, not far from where they’re currently docked in a floating trading city. Viktor insists that they check it out.

“It’s an exploration mission!” he yells gleefully. “We haven’t had a proper landing mission in ages.”

They assemble all the necessary officers for the landing team: mainly Yuuri and whoever he wants to bring along. It’s a struggle not to pick his entire department, but he eventually decides on a small core team of biologists, chemists, and Chris. Viktor also forces his way onto the mission.

“This is a science mission, Viktor,” Yuuri explains patiently. “For _scientists_.”

“You’re bringing Chris,” Viktor points out.

“Yes, but that’s because we need someone to fly the shuttle there and back. Also, Chris doesn’t complain as much as you do.”

“I resent that.”

Yuuri ends up packing way too much gear, like always. It never hurts to be safe. The planet is very Earth like, with a high percentage of water and climate zones similar to the ones on Earth. It revolves around a binary star system, meaning they have two sunsets everyday. Yuuri is particularly interested in how the extra sun affects plant life. Phichit calls him a nerd.

“Well, it’s kind of my job to be a nerd. It’s your job to be a nerd, too,” Yuuri says. “Also, start packing. You’re coming with us.”

They land just after the second sun rises, putting a full 18 hour day ahead of them. Viktor outlines rendezvous times and goes over Starfleet regulations one last time. No one but Yuuri pays attention to that part. After checking in and calibrating their tricorders the group disbands, everyone going off to fulfill their particular goal.

Yuuri is observing some interestingly spotted ferns when he hears the voice. It cuts through his thoughts like a knife, clear and low. It takes him a second to register that it’s speaking to him in Japanese, and not Standard. Yuuri follows the voice, entranced.

“ _Clever boy,”_ it says, leading him to the mouth of a cave. “ _Such a clever boy.”_

 _Yes!_ Yuuri thinks, picking his way across the piles of bones littering the cave floor. _I am a clever boy!_

He stops then and thinks _what the hell_? He shakes his head to clear it of the fog. Okay, whatever this thing is, it’s messing with his mind. He wonders if maybe it’s pheromones from the plants. He wants to go back out to check.

_“Clever boy, come closer.”_

Yuuri looks up to see a giant, scaly beast slithering towards him. It looks a lot like a snake, but it’s scales are iridescent, shifting in the low light. Yuuri wonders about their chemical composition. His gaze flickers to the thing’s… head? If you could call it that. It’s more of a lump of flesh with teeth. Yuuri notes that it doesn’t have eyes.    

“ _Clever boy,_ ” the voice whispers directly into Yuuri’s head. “ _You don’t want to die here, millions of light years from your home, do you? What would your sister say? Your mother? You don’t belong on that ship, do you, clever boy? Stay here, with me. Stay and we can–”_

“Oh, shut up,” Yuuri says, raising his phaser and shooting the snake thing.

He stares at the stunned body, debating whether or not to run and call for backup. He decides to alert Phichit to his location and starts setting up shop to analyze whatever the hell this thing is.

“I mean, really?” Yuuri mutters, pulling out a syringe. “That was hardly a compelling argument.”

It seemed to have some kind of telepathic ability. Yuuri should probably be careful, it is _alive_ after all. But then he thinks, this thing just tried to get him to abandon his ship, probably so it could eat him or something, so really, who’s in the wrong here? He takes some samples and explores its lair for a bit before he goes, making sure to highlight it as a danger zone as he leaves, just in case someone else from their landing party accidentally stumbles upon it after it wakes up.

By the time he meets up with the rest of the landing party it’s almost first sunset. As he approaches the group he notices that everyone seems to be frazzled, punching things rapidly into their tricorders.

“Hey,” he says, coming up behind Viktor. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

Viktor whips his head around to stare at Yuuri, relief palpable on his face. “Yuuri!”

“... Yes?”

“Where have you been? We’ve been looking everywhere!”

Yuuri frowns. “I’m not late to the rendezvous time, though? And I pinned my location earlier, so–”

“That was hours ago!”

“Sorry, but again: I’m here on time. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“Viktor was just being Team Mom again,” Chris says, slinging an arm around Yuuri’s shoulders. “He got everyone all worked up. He was worried that you wandered off and got eaten by a giant snake or something.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “Well, I almost _did_ get eaten by a giant snake. But I’m okay.”

“ _What?”_

“Yeah, I was exploring some caves and– Viktor!” Yuuri yelps as Viktor crowds against him, hands roving his body frantically. “What are you doing?!”

“I’m checking for injuries, you idiot!” Viktor says, tilting Yuuri’s head back and forth in his hands. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I’m fine, it didn’t even touch me! I stunned it and got some samples before I left, I’m not hurt– Ow! Stop it!”

Viktor pokes Yuuri’s side. “I am never letting you out of my sight again. We’re all using the buddy system from now on.”

“Viktor, I am a _trained and certified Starfleet officer._ I don’t need you babysitting me.”

“It’s not babysitting,” Viktor says, turning his head to address the rest of the landing party. “Partner up, we’re using the buddy system.”

“Dibs on Yuuri,” Phichit says, shoving his way in between Yuuri and Viktor. Chris pouts off to the side.

“You can’t have him, he’s my partner,” Viktor frowns. “I need to protect him from giant snakes.”

“Okay, first of all, I don’t need protecting from anything. I took care of myself. Secondly, this is a waste of resources and time, we’re all trained officers not pre-schoolers. It would be much more efficient if everyone went off and fulfilled their individual parts of the mission, you know, like we’ve been doing for the better part of the year?”

“Yeah, you heard Yuuri,” Chris smirks. “Let’s split up, gang.”

“I hate you all and your vintage Earth TV show references,” Seung-gil mutters.

“You’re right, Yuuri,” Viktor turns so he’s fully facing the rest of the landing team. “The rest of you will go on doing… whatever it is that we assigned you to do. Yuuri and I will use the buddy system.”

Yuuri groans. He resigns himself to explaining basic scientific concepts to Viktor for the rest of the expedition.

“This isn’t fair!” Phichit complains. “I’m the next ranked science officer, I should be paired with Yuuri!”

“You live with him. You see him all the time,” Viktor says, pouting like a child. “Learn to share.”

“He’s _my_ bestfriend!”

“He’s _my_ First Officer!”

“I hate you both,” Yuuri says. He grabs Viktor by the arm, tugging him in the direction he’d just come from. “C’mon, we have three hours before the next rendezvous and I want to see if this planet has any dogs.”

“Okay, team! Meet back here in three hours, you know the drill,” Viktor yells over his shoulder as he bounds along next to Yuuri. Yuuri hides his fond smile by turning his head, watching the first sun dip below the horizon line.

 

 

* * *

 iv.

* * *

 

Sometimes Yuuri misses Earth so much it hurts to breathe because he knows he’s not breathing in Earth air. Sometimes he looks around at the ship he loves, his _home_ , and he hates the sleek metal and chrome so much it scares him. He longs for the rich scent of soil, the lush green of an Earth forest. Yuuri misses the sea the most, the crashing waves a perfect metronome. Yuuri had been homesick back at the Academy, but never like this. San Francisco was only an ocean away from Japan, after all. Now there’s trillions of miles in between him and the Hasetsu cherry blossoms. It’s a bruise that gets prodded often.

No one else on board really understands this homesickness, except Phichit. They’re the only two of the crew that had been born on Earth. It was like this when they were in school, too: the two of them curled up close together, as if clutching someone else from Earth would soothe the ache of being so far away from their roots.

They populate their rooms with knick-knacks and photographs until the walls and halls connecting their rooms are crowded with them. As the First Officer, Yuuri should theoretically have his living quarters but then he and Phichit would have to split their things between them and, realistically, Phichit would spend most of his free time in Yuuri’s room anyways. After rooming together at the Academy for so long it’s hard to break old habits.

“Mari sent another postcard!” Yuuri calls on mail day, waving his hands excitedly. Phichit lifts his head from where he was slumped over on the couch.

“Great!” he beams. “Put up on the wall.”

Yuuri crosses the room to the wall they have dedicated to pictures and postcards from home. Every time they get physical mail at least one of their siblings has sent them something. Phichit’s younger sister is an aspiring photographer, taking after Phichit, so her photos take up the majority of the wall. Yuuri has a small corner where he tacks up the postcards Mari sends him on the rare occasion that she leaves Hasetsu.

“Another one from Tokyo?”

“Yeah, look! This one has the tower on it.”

“Neat!”

Their rooms on the Enterprise is almost identical to their apartment back in San Francisco. Seung-gil tells Yuuri that it’s unhealthy to cling to the past and all this hoarding is probably a sign of a deep psychological issue. Yuuri kindly tells him to mind his own business and let him have his pretty pictures.

Yuuri loves how they’ve turned their small corner on the ship into a wild mix of their two homes. Phichit understands him completely. Other people? Not so much.

The ship is docked inside a large trading port, a big city made of floating metal and straddling the stratosphere of a dark, stormy planet. They have a couple hours while they wait for the ship to refuel to stock up on supplies. Naturally, Viktor turns it into a shopping trip.

“Amazing!” he cries, herding their small group through an open air market. It's bright up here, despite the roiling mass bellow. Yuuri takes in the vivid colors and sounds, basking in the cacophony. He likes it here, he decides.

Viktor loops an arm around Yuuri’s, pulling him towards a vendor selling a strange looking tentacle thing roasted on a stick.

“Are you guys hungry? Let's eat! I'll pay!”

“Thanks, dad,” Yurio says, rolling his eyes.

“Hey! I'm just trying to look out for my crew,” Viktor pouts.

“Yeah, stop calling him dad,” Yuuri teases. “He's obviously more of a grandpa. Look at his hair.”

Viktor looks at him, betrayed while their crew laughs in the background. Yuuri pats him on the head.

“Go ahead and eat,” he says, extracting himself from Viktor's side. “I’ll catch up later. I want to look around.”

Yuuri wanders off, swept up in the electric atmosphere of the market. He bounces from stall to stall while the others eat. He's just turning away from a booth selling six fingered gloves when he spots it.

It's _perfect._

A small, hairy looking vendor is hunched over in one of the smaller stalls, at the center is a masterpiece: an Earth world map painted on dark, cherry wood. Yuuri moves forward as if in a trance. The map is intricate and mostly accurate, from what he can see. The glossy paint shines brightly in a nice contrast to the wood behind it. Yuuri thinks that it would look perfect on his and Phichit's photo wall. He knows especially that Phichit would love it, being the cartographer and certified Map Nerd that he is.

He has to have it.

(Here are some things about Yuuri:

  1. As one of the highest ranking science officers in Starfleet, he has a fairly large bank account. It's enough to buy a planet, even after he sends the majority of his paycheck back home.
  2. He has no impulse control.)



“Hello!” Yuuri greets enthusiastically. The vendor nearly falls off their stool. “How much for the map?”

“The- The Earth map?”

“Yes! It's gorgeous! Is that real Earth wood or synthetic?”

“I-It’s real, sir. Real cherry wood from Japan.”

“From Japan?” Yuuri gasps. He bounces on his heels excitedly. “From Japan!”

“Yes,” the vendor inches back as Yuuri crowds in closer, inspecting the detailing on the map. Yuuri can hardly believe his luck, the map was drawn with modern country borders.

“I’ll take it,” Yuuri says, sliding his card out from his wallet. “How much?”

“1,500 Federation Credits, sir.”

Yuuri gapes.

“Um. What.”

“Well, You see it's a real Earth artifact made by an Earth human. That is rare this far away from the Terran system.”

“Well, yes, but that price isn't reasonable. Give it to me for half.”

The vendor gapes at him. Their previous timid demeanor falls away. Yuuri steels himself for a fight.

By the time the rest of the crew find him, he's managed to haggle the price down to a much nicer number. It's still a disgustingly large amount of money, but it's not like Yuuri is spending his credits like this all the time. He needs that map.

His crewmates stare in horror as Yuuri forks over the entire sum in cash, after ransacking a nearby ATM.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, sounding strangled. “I don’t understand.”

Yuuri clutches the map close to his chest. It’s heavy.

“Yuuri… babe,” Chris looks at him like he’s grown a third head. “I’ve seen you use socks as mittens to save money. You just spent, like, enough credits to buy a small moon. Why?”

“Yeah, Katsudon, what the hell? It’s just a chunk of wood.”

“No, guys, you don’t understand,” Yuuri flips the map around to show them. “It’s Earth! And it’s made from Earth wood from Japan, look!”

Yuuri points excitedly at the small island. “This is where I was born!”

Chris leans in so close that his nose almost brushes the glossy, painted surface. “Wow, you never told me your home was on an island!”

Yuuri nods excitedly.

“I know you guys didn’t study Earth geography while we were in school but do you at least know where San Francisco is?”

“It’s somewhere here, isn’t it?” Chris guesses, gesturing vaguely towards Europe.

“We spent _six years_ there,” Yuuri says, shaking his head. “It’s here. And this is Thailand! Where Phichit is from!”

“I still don’t understand what’s so cool about a map. Can’t you just look up one?” Viktor asks.

“But this one is so pretty! And it’s from Earth, it’s like–” Yuuri cuts himself off, a little embarrassed that he’s so excited about something that his friends think is only worth a passing glance. “Phichit would understand.”

“He ran off, a little while ago. He said something about seeing some–”

“Yuuri!” Phichit screeches. He’s weaving through the crowd towards them, his hands clutching two tall cups of–

“Is that milk tea?!”

Phichit nods when he finally pushes his way to them. He hands Yuuri one of the cups, full of pastel purple liquid with dark brown dots sitting at the bottom.

“How?!”

“One of the vendors was selling them! I got you the taro flavored one.”

Yuuri takes a sip. He lets out an indecent moan.

“I’m still confused,” Viktor says, face slightly flushed and eyes darting back and forth between Yuuri and Phichit. “What’s milk tea?”

“An Earth delicacy,” Phichit informs him.

“It’s tea, but… with milk. Try it,” Yuuri says, holding the straw out to Viktor. He takes an experimental sip, face brightening when it hits his tongue.

“Oh!” Viktor smiles. “It’s… chewy!”

“That’s the boba. Here, Chris, Yurio, Leo, all of you! Try it!”

They pass the cup around. Yuuri bounces with excitement.

“Okay, it’s good, but I still don’t get it. You can make this on the ship.”

“Yeah, Katsudon. It’s just tea.”

Yuuri deflates slightly. He turns to Phichit, his platonic soulmate, who seems to be on the same wavelength.

“It’s okay, they don’t understand. Also, holy shit that’s the coolest map I’ve ever seen, is that real wood?”

Yuuri laughs. He doesn’t know how he’d ever survive without Phichit.

When they get back on the ship Yuuri wastes no time in hanging up the map. He pulls out a roll of extra strength tape that he stole from Sara down in engineering. Even in a multi-billion credit spaceship duct tape seems to be the answer to everything.

While Yuuri struggles with the tape Phichit uploads his photos from his camera onto his computer.

“Anything good?” Yuuri asks over his shoulder. He tacks on the last piece of tape and gently presses the map to the wall. Perfect.  

“Hmm… maybe,” Phichit responds. “Can you come look at this?”

“Sure, what’s up?” Yuuri comes up behind Phichit and drapes himself over the back of his chair. “Is it a picture of a dog?”

“You and dogs,” Phichit shakes his head fondly. “No, it’s not a dog. I think… I think I might have found something? I was playing around with my new lens, the one that Starfleet sent in. It’s got like a crazy amount of zoom! I love it more than I love life, Yuuri.”

Phichit continues to babble on about the specs of his new lens and how it works with his high resolution camera and how clear everything looks. Yuuri smiles and pulls up a chair next to Phichit so he can lean his head against the younger man’s shoulder and listen as his voice gets higher as he gets more and more excited. After a while Phichit cuts himself off.

“I had to fiddle with the aperture to get it to– wait, I had something to show you!” he taps at his computer screen and pulls up a picture. “Sorry, I got distracted. Here, look!”

Yuuri peers curiously at the photo. It’s a gorgeous shot of space with the stormy planet and the trading city in the foreground. The stars twinkle brightly in the distance and the space around them is tinged pink and purple with the ionized gases of nebulas. The interstellar clouds look fluffy and soft, a bright contrast to the raging storm on the planet below and the hard metallic lines of the trading city.  Phichit must have held himself very still because Yuuri didn’t see him carrying a tripod earlier and the photo captured so many stars that it’s impossible for him to not have used a long exposure time. It is, like all of Phichit’s shots, absolutely beautiful.

“ _Wow_ ,” Yuuri breathes and he falls in love with the mystic beauty of outer space all over again.

“Thank you,” Phichit preens. “But that’s not what I wanted to show you, look!”

He fiddles around and zooms in to a dark patch of space between nebulas.

“This is the famous Chaos patch, named after the ancient Earth Greek cosmological myth about the deity representing the void before the birth of the universe,” Phichit tells him.

“It’s also called the Womb of Darkness. Edgy, huh?” Phichit turns his head, smiling Yuuri’s favorite lopsided grin. Yuuri will never stop being amazed and how much _stuff_ is crammed in Phichit’s head. As the lead cartographer on board it’s his job to know all the nearby systems and their names but Yuuri has no idea how Phichit manages to remember every single sliver of information he’s ever come across. Yuuri struggles to remember his own birthday most of the time.

“So, it’s supposed to be this patch of… nothingness?” Yuuri asks. “No star systems, no… anything?”

“Nothing but the cold, dark vacuum of space!” Phichit says cheerfully. “For tons and tons of light years! It’s a massive piece of void!”

“Okay, so? What were you going to show me?”

“Well, because it’s full of nothing no one usually bothers to look at it,” Phichit says, expanding the image further. “ _I_ wasn’t even trying to look at it but I was trying to edit this to maybe sell it as a print when I saw _this!_ ”

Yuuri lifts his head from Phichit’s shoulder and squints at the screen.

“It’s… a white dot?”

“It’s three by five pixels of _light,_ Yuuri!” Phichit squeals, bouncing excitedly. “There’s no light in nothingness! Which means there’s something there! At first I thought maybe it was a mistake or some glare from the windows but I checked the rest of my photos from multiple angles and it’s still there!”

“Phichit, that’s amazing! If there’s light there’s probably a star system, maybe even some planets, maybe even some life,” Yuuri grins, caught up in his friend’s excited energy.

“I know! We have to send it to Starfleet immediately so they can send out an exploration team.”

“An exploration team?” Yuuri frowns. “Why don’t we just go?”

Phichit whips his head towards Yuuri.

“Us? We can’t go. We have a mission.”

“Our mission is to discover new things,” Yuuri points out. “This is a new thing.”

“But we can’t go,” Phichit frowns. “It’s… It’s….”

“It’s what? Too far? We have the best ship in the universe with warp drive capabilities and some of the best ion thrusters out there.”

“Yuuri, it’s _very far_. It would take us months and what if–”

Phichit breaks off, uncharacteristically self conscious.

“What if what?” Yuuri prods gently.

“What if I’m wrong? I’d waste so much of our time and resources. What if there’s nothing there?”

“Phichit, you were so sure just a second ago. Why are you doubting yourself now?”

Phichit stops and takes in Yuuri’s words. Yuuri reaches over to take his hand reassuringly.

“You’re right,” he says eventually. When he looks up Yuuri spots a familiar glint of determination in his eyes. “Let’s go.”

They get the mission approved from Starfleet with relative ease. Yuuri thinks that Viktor must have pulled some strings with Admiral Yakov. He can’t scold him on blatantly using Yakov’s favoritism in their favor because Yuuri also took advantage of Madame Baranovskaya’s soft spot for him to get them new mapping equipment for Phichit.

It really does take them months but eventually the small speck of white becomes a faint glimmer in the distance becomes a full star system right in front of them, burning brilliant and alone, nestled in the vast patch of void. Phichit cries when he sees it.

It’s a singular star orbited by five small planets but it’s something. In the distance, they can see another faint glimmer, another yet to be explored collection of celestial bodies just waiting.

“Oh my god, Yuuri,” Phichit gasps, clutching Yuuri by the front of his uniform. “I discovered a star system!”

“I know!” Yuuri laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners. “What are you going to name it?”

“What?”

“You discovered it, you get to name it.”

Phichit breaths in deep, eyes shining. He looks out from the viewing port at the system he discovered, tucked into a previously ignored corner of existence. Yuuri watches his face as he looks off into the horizon at the second glimmer, the hint of more to come.

“I’m naming it the Chulanont system,” Phichit says. “For my family. For my country.”

Yuuri is so, _so_ proud to call Phichit his best friend.

 

 

* * *

 v.

* * *

  

A few months after they explore the Chulanont system, they pick Minami up at a small Starfleet training facility on the edge of the quadrant. He pretty much immediately latches onto Yuuri.

They’ve been meaning to pick up more medical crew. Seung-gil has been very vocal about the lack of help around the medbay, so Viktor put in the request to Starfleet and very soon they were directed to a tiny moon in a tiny system where they picked up the tiniest medical officer in the whole galaxy.

“C-Commander Katsuki! My name is Kenjirou Minami!” Minami squeaks, shaking Yuuri’s hand vigorously. “I-It’s s-such an honor, sir!”

“Likewise,” Yuuri says smiling. “I’m glad you’ll be joining our crew.”

Minami looks like he’s going to faint. Yuuri is mildly concerned.

“Are you okay, Ensign?”

“Y-Yes, sir! It’s just that– I’m a really big fan!”

“A… fan?” Yuuri asks with a creeping sense of horror.

“Yes! I grew up on Earth and, well, you probably already know but you’re a really big deal back home! You’re really such a big inspiration. You’re the reason I joined Starfleet.”

Yuuri chokes. He’s … flattered but uncomfortable with such high praise. Minami looks up at him like he created the universe.

“You see, I’m … I’m natural-born, too,” Minami says. “Everyone told me I couldn’t join Starfleet. Until you did! And then you became one of the highest ranking science officers in the entire galaxy! I don’t know if you’ve been home recently but you’re the face of a movement, Commander Katsuki!”

“A movement?”

“For less natural-born discrimination! You don’t know?”

“I haven’t been home in a while,” Yuuri mumbles guiltily. He studies the small bundle of energy in front of him. Minami is very young, barely graduated. He’s smaller than the average person, like Yuuri, which gives away his birth circumstances. Minami had passed the interview process with flying colors, according to Viktor. His file was impressive, too. He’s so bright eyed and eager to discover that it makes Yuuri excited, swept up in his energy. Yuuri can almost see his younger self in Minami.

“Well,” Yuuri says, clearing his throat. “Welcome to the crew of the Enterprise.”

“Thank you so much, Commander!”

“Please,” Yuuri says as he smiles warmly. “Call me Yuuri. Everyone does.”

Minami flaps his hands in excitement. Yuuri resolves to do everything in his power to protect this small cinnamon roll.

From then on, Minami becomes Yuuri’s shadow. Seung-gil complains that Minami spends more time in the labs than he does in the med bay.

“I mean, he’s doing blood tests,” Yuuri says. “I don’t see why it’s a problem.”

“He’s supposed to be under _my_ department, Yuuri,” Seung-gil grumbles. “Last I checked, the Chief Medical Officer was in charge of the subordinating medical officers.”

Yuuri hums in amusement. “We can request more staff.”

“And risk getting another one of your fanboys? I’d rather assist in a Gorn childbirth.”

Yuuri chuckles.

Minami can be a little obnoxious sometimes but Yuuri likes him anyway. There’s something about the kid, something bouncy and youthful and full of life in a way that Yuuri had never been at his age. At his age Yuuri was burying his nose in textbooks and praying that Starfleet would admit him, against all odds. Yuuri tells him this one day.

“I almost didn’t get in,” he admits, busy finishing up analyzing some chemical compounds. It’s just him and Minami in the lab this late, the younger officer refusing to let Yuuri carry out the last experiments alone. Out in the halls the lights have dimmed to simulate night time but inside the lab is brightly lit.

“ _You?!_ ” Minami squeaks, scandalized. “They almost didn’t let you in?”

“I wasn’t always a Chief Science Officer, you know,” Yuuri says sheepishly. “I barely scraped by the application requirements. I think the only reason they didn’t flat out reject me was because Minako-sensei vouched for me.”

“But-But! You’re a legend! If they never admitted you, _I_ never even would have applied!”

“You keep saying that,” Yuuri frowns, swirling the contents of a beaker lazily. “I-I don’t really understand why _I’m_ the reason you joined.”

“How can you not know?” Minami demands before he remembers himself. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to yell, Commander.”

“I told you, no one really cares about ranks on this ship,” Yuuri reassures. “You can call my Yuuri.”

“Yuuri, surely you know that Starfleet has been using you as the face of the organization! You’re a hero! An idol!”

“Um. Well, they did take my picture for some promotional stuff, but I thought that would just be for some pamphlets in Japan? I know you said before that I’m … the face of a movement … but what does that even _mean?_ How can I lead a movement if I’m not even on Earth?”

“Through example!” Minami looks at him, his big eyes shining under the lab’s too-bright lights. “No other naturally born person has held an office so high since the 21st century!”

“I mean, okay? Being naturally born really isn’t a big deal–”

“It is to me!” Minami almost shouts.

Yuuri stops, eyes widening. He sets down his beaker, aware that he’s hurt Minami on some level.

“I-It’s a big deal,” he repeats, quieter. “I never thought– I wasn’t as fast or as strong as the other cadets. Or as smart. I had health problems that none of the doctors knew how to deal with. I thought I’d never leave Japan, let alone the planet.”

Yuuri stares at him, a lump in his throat.

“But then!” Minami continues. “You were admitted! And you weren’t as naturally gifted as the rest of your classmates either but you were– are!– just as good. Better. And then you were promoted to First Officer of a starship right after graduation! Starfleet capitalized on that right away. You said you hadn’t been back to Earth in a while? You’re everywhere, Yuuri. Naturally born people started applying to Starfleet in droves.

“So, it matters, okay? To me and to them.”

Yuuri gulps.

“I-I,” he starts, and then swallows again. “I’m sorry, Minami. I didn’t know–”

“Well, now you do,” Minami says, eyes blazing. “So don’t talk yourself down, okay? You deserve the recognition.”

And then he smiles up at Yuuri, so big and bright that Yuuri feels, momentarily, like he just watched a star being born.

 

 

* * *

 vi.

* * *

 

Yuuri has always been self conscious about the fact that he’s naturally born. Most people’s parents visit a geneticist to eliminate a predisposition to a disease or bad traits that they don’t want their kid to have. The human race is honing themselves down to be the brightest, fastest, healthiest they can be. His peers had always been the picture of health: loud and vibrant and so obviously _planned._ Yuuri, however, was a–

“Not a mistake. Not an accident,” his mother insists. “A surprise.”

Even Yuuri’s older sister, Mari, had been planned. It’s obvious, when you place them next to each other. Mari is taller, her skin clearer and eyes sharper looking. Yuuri tends to hunch over himself, trying to make himself seem as small as possible.

“He has a severe anxiety disorder,” the doctor reports. “Most people engineer it out but sometimes it’s inevitable, environmentally caused or otherwise. It’s not hard to treat, but we’re not sure how his… natural… immune system would react to the medication. It was designed to fix the brain chemistry of engineered individuals.”

The most they can give him is therapy. Yuuri doesn’t understand how talking to someone will help him feel less like he’s drowning but he goes for his parent’s sake. This turns out to be the best decision of his life.

His therapist’s name is Minako Okukawa but Yuuri calls her Minako-sensei. She’s a recently returned home Starfleet officer, specialized in medicine and particularly mental health. Yuuri thinks she’s the coolest person he’s ever met.

“Space does weird things to people’s brains,” she tells him. “We’re still trying to study it but… even engineered people have trouble coping.”

She tells him all about her time in Starfleet. Of course, Yuuri knew about the type of things that Starfleet did, but he didn’t know just how _cool_ their missions were.

“One time,” Minako says. “We were on an exploration mission to this new planet. We were the first ones to touch the surface, ever. No intelligent life forms whatsoever. After a day or two, we realized that the plants were secreting some kind of hormone or pollen or something. It was making everyone horrendously sick. Luckily, I ran some tests and managed to neutralize the threat and get everyone back onto our ship in one piece.”

“Wow!”

“They named the planet after me,” Minako says with a laugh. “The Captain said it was because I’m just as irritating as all the pollen and twice as deadly.”

Minako teaches him how to fence. She teaches him how to be a strong swimmer, despite the fact that his lungs are generally smaller than most people’s. She teaches him ballet and balance and how to use his smaller frame to throw men twice his size over his shoulder. She teaches him how to recognize hundreds of different plant species. She teaches him how to shoot a phaser with deadly accuracy but to _always_ keep it on stun unless he’s absolutely sure there’s no way out. By the time Yuuri is thirteen he’s been taught half the curriculum in a general Starfleet program. He wants more.

Yuuri isn’t delusional. He knows that the chances of him getting into the Academy is slim. He’s already at a disadvantage with his birth circumstances, but he’s also from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. There are kids who are groomed to be Starfleet officers, who grew up a stone’s throw away from the training facilities, perpetually open for practice.

That doesn’t stop Yuuri from trying.

He trains until he’s certain that he’s shaved ten years off of his lifespan. Not only physically, Yuuri also begs Minako to let him use her old textbooks.

“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” she asks him one day, hovering by the door while he pours over a book about dark matter. “You really want this?”

“More than anything,” he says, jaw set with determination. “I know that it’s a longshot, but I think I can do it.”

“Let’s get you to manage your anxiety first, kid,” she smiles at him, soft for only a moment before she’s tugging him out of his chair. “C’mon let’s go get lunch and I’ll teach you some breathing exercises.”

It’s startling but one day Yuuri realizes that he’s… managing. He’s struggling, but now he has more good days than bad. It helps that he has something to focus on, something to draw his attention away from the gaping void in his head that seems to suck in light and love and anything else close enough to fall in.

Yuuri submits his application when he turns eighteen. He’d barely scraped together enough money for the application fee. He expects an email on his datapad, either accepting or rejecting him. Instead he gets the current head of the science department showing up at his door.

“Hello, is this the Katsuki residence?” the tall, severe woman says. “I’m Madame Baranovskaya, of the Starfleet General and Applied Sciences Department. May I speak to Yuuri Katsuki?”

Yuuri is intimidated by her sharp features and sharper Starfleet uniform. He’s not embarrassed of where he comes from, never, but he does feel significantly less refined, standing in his worn socks and old sweatpants. He immediately calls Minako over.

“Ah,” Madame Baranovskaya says as soon as she sees Minako. “I knew you’d be close by.”

Minako smiles genuinely. “Lilia. I see you’ve received Yuuri’s application?”

“It’s impressive,” she continues, as if Yuuri isn’t standing right next to him. “Your student has the best application in the pool right now. You always know how to spot greatness, don’t you Minako?”

Minako beams proudly.

“However, there are things that need to be discussed. Decisions to be made.”

Madame Baranovskaya turns to face Yuuri. Her official science officer insignia glints in the low light.

“I will not lie to you, boy. I respect you and Minako too much. It will be hard. You will be the only natural born student we’ve admitted in thirty years. Your fellow students will have an advantage over you, despite how well prepared you are. Minako cannot follow you, you will have to adapt to new teachers. The odds are stacked against you.”

Yuuri has been told this for years. He did not come so close only to back off now.

“I know,” he says, steel in his eyes. “No one expects me to be able to handle it. I’ll prove them wrong.”

Madame Baranovskaya’s eyes widen in surprise. She lets out a low whistle. “Minako, why did you not send him to me sooner?”

“I can’t have you stealing away all my best students, Lilia. I still haven’t forgiven you from taking Sara.”

Madame Baranovskaya hums in amusement.

“I see. If you’re sure that you can handle this,” she says, reaching into her pocket and producing a metal insignia identical to the one on her uniform.

“Welcome to Starfleet, Mr. Katsuki.”


	2. space pirates

* * *

vii. 

* * *

 

As much as Yuuri loves exploration, he’s always glad to be landing on a developed planet. Getting soil samples and measuring the pH of water in untouched systems is Yuuri’s favorite thing to do, but nothing beats warm running water and the comfort that comes with big, crowded cities. Weirdly enough, crowds tend to soothe him despite his anxiety. It’s something about the way that everyone is here for different reasons, from lightyears away and they all just happen to be sharing the same space for a moment. In the vastness of space it’s easy to feel alone. 

The trading post they’re stopped at reminds Yuuri of San Francisco in the sense that it’s extremely crowded and half falling into the ocean. The ocean on this planet just happens to be a light bubblegum pink instead of blue. Yuuri likes it here a lot. 

“This looks like something straight out of an aesthetic edits internet blog,” Phichit mumbles, lining up to take a picture of the pink sea and black sand of the beach. “These pictures are going to turn out amazing!”

Yuuri can barely hear him over the shutter of his camera. 

“Aren’t we supposed to be doing something productive?” Georgi says, kicking at the sand. “When you said we were going on a very important mission, I didn’t think you meant we were gonna hang out on the beach.”

“Cheer up, Georgi!” Viktor chirps as he flings an arm around Georgi’s shoulders. “This  _ is  _ an important mission! We are taking  your mind off Anya!”

At the sound of her name Georgi starts to tear up. 

“Hey, don’t be sad,” Milla coos. “You don’t need her! Being single is great!”

“You don’t get to talk!” Georgi wails. “You’re married to Sara!”

“Yes, very happily, but that doesn’t mean  _ you _ can’t be alone and happy!”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. He pats Georgi on the back. 

“She was a shitty chemist anyway,” he says softy. “We’re better off without her. Now, come on. Take a picture with me so I can send it to Mari.”

Georgi, miraculously, pulls himself together enough for them to all take a group picture with Phichit’s data tablet suspended on a selfie stick. 

“Okay, can we go now?” Yurio grumbles. “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.”

“Rough and irritating? Sounds like you have a lot in common,” Mila quips. This starts a wrestling match between them which eventually devolves into a massive fight among the entire group. Yuuri sighs and takes in the sight before him: an elite team of Starfleet officers scrambling around the sand like children, trying to shove fistfulls of the stuff down each other’s uniforms. He wonders what he did to deserve such a ridiculous crew. He idly contemplates resigning when Viktor flings a handful of sand directly in his face.

“Oops,” he says, looking vaguely guilty but mostly amused. “Sorry, Yuuri. I was aiming for Phichit.”

Yuuri thinks that that’s bullshit, considering Phichit is a good ten feet away from Yuuri.

“Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri says solemnly. “You are a dead man.”

And then he tackles him. 

Eventually, the crew collectively decides to call it a draw and they pull themselves, sweaty and breathless, back to the transport shuttle. Yuuri thinks about complaining about his now dirty uniform, but then he catches sight of Georgi smiling for the first time since he and Anya broke up. He decides that a dirty uniform is worth his fellow science officer’s happiness.

Once they make it to the big city Yuuri, Viktor, and Yurio decide to split off from the main group and go get lunch. This region of this planet is known for their spicy food and Yuuri is excited to watch Viktor try to stay cool despite the fact that he has almost no tolerance for anything spicier than ketchup. They buy some bowls of fluorescent red noodles and settle down on a table in a nearby park, basking in the sunshine. Yuuri scans their surroundings, taking in the clear air and the fluffy clouds and–

“Oh, my god,” Yuuri gasps, eyes shining. “That is the cutest dog I’ve ever seen.”

Yurio glances over in the direction that Yuuri is looking. He does a doubletake when his eyes catch on the fluffy mass of Not Dog that Yuuri is melting over.

“Katsudon,” Yurio says in disbelief. “What the hell. That’s not a dog and I know that you know it isn’t a dog because you are our  _ chief science officer _ who has grown up on Earth, surrounded by dogs. That’s not a dog.”

Yuuri ignores him, cooing softly at the Not Dog.

“Yurio, don’t,” Viktor says softly. 

“Viktor, what’s wrong with him?”

“Yuuri calls every fluffy, vaguely mammalian looking animal a dog. It’s easier to just let him.”

“Hi, there!” Yuuri calls, beckoning the Not Dog over. “I’m Yuuri! You are the cutest dog I’ve ever seen!”

“It’s not a dog! It’s got like eight legs and– What the fuck, Katsudon, are you petting it?!”

“Hey look guys,” Yuuri laughs as the Not Dog tackles him down to the ground. “I think he likes me!”

“Yuuri, it’s trying to eat you.”

“Ha, aww,” Yuuri smiles. “So cute!”

The Not Dog’s owner notices that his Not Dog is currently trying to devour Yuuri and so he rushes over to pry his weird looking pet off of him. Yuuri waves off his apologies, asking a million questions about the Not Dog, feeding it small bits of his noodles as they talk. 

“This is Mulder! I’ve had him for seven years.”

“You named your… dog? Not dog? Pet? You named your pet Mulder? Like, from the X-files?”

“Yes, wow,” the Not Dog’s owner laughs. “Usually no one gets the reference!”

“Do you have another Not Dog named Scully?”

“Yeah, she’s back home though. We miss her a lot.”

“Are you not from here?”

“No, we’re here on business,” the Not Dog’s owner says. “I’m the manager of a biochem company on Earth. We’re trying to convince other planets to buy our compounds.”

“You’re from Earth?” Yuuri bounces, lighting up. “I’m from Earth, too!”

He looks at Viktor who has been suspiciously quiet for a while. 

“Viktor, he’s from Earth!”

Viktor smiles sarcastically. “Wow, he’s from Earth _ and  _ he likes the X-Files  _ and  _ he has a dog? He’s practically perfect.”

Yuuri frowns. It’s unlike Viktor to be unsociable. Yuuri talks to the guy, Kam, for a while longer. It turns out that Kam had lived in San Francisco around the same time that Yuuri had been at university. Viktor continues to sit in stony silence and eventually Yurio leaves them, grumbling about disgusting captains and their disgusting jealousy problems. Yuuri doesn’t even notice him leaving, too busy fawning over the Not Dog still. 

“Well, we better get going. It was nice to meet you Commander Yuuri,” Kam says, standing up and stretching. 

“Aw, I’ll miss you,” he says to Mulder. Viktor chokes beside him and Yuuri looks up to see if he’s okay, but Viktor won’t meet his eyes. Strange.

“You know, if you want… you could hang out with me again sometime? You’re not leaving soon are you? We could get dinner and talk some more. You’re really interesting, it would be an honor to take you out on a date,” Kam says, smiling down at Yuuri.  

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “Um.”

Kam made it sound like they had been… flirting. Yuuri has never flirted with anyone in his entire life. He breathes in and gets ready to turn him down politely. 

“Sorry,” Yuuri says. “I’m only interested in your dog.”

Viktor snorts beside him, and then he looks at Kam’s face and bursts into full laughter. Yuuri blushes. He had meant to say something nicer, really, but then everything got all jumbled in his head. He stares down at Mulder mournfully, making peace with the idea that Yuuri will probably never see the Not Dog again because Kam looks like he’s ready to run screaming in the other direction.

“I see,” Kam says cooly. “I guess I misinterpreted.”

He walks away. Yuuri’s face is burning with embarrassment and Viktor is still laughing hysterically, almost knocking the table over. There are tears of laughter streaming down his face. 

“Viktor,” Yuuri hisses. “Stop. You’re attracting attention.”

“Yuuri,  _ Yuuri, _ ” Viktor gasps. “You– You just straight up told him you were only into his dog. His face– I can’t.”

“I-I didn’t know he thought I was flirting,” Yuuri grumbles, hiding his face in his hands. “I just thought his dog was really cool!”

“So, you really weren’t interested in him?” Viktor chuckles. “I was starting to worry that my first officer was going to elope with some pretentious hipster and his Not Dog.”

“I wasn’t interested!” Yuuri groans. “And I would definitely never elope.”

Yuuri stops and thinks.

“Well,” he says. “Maybe if he had a poodle.”

“ _ Yuuri,” _ Viktor whines, but all the animosity from earlier is gone. He looks strangely relieved. Yuuri doesn’t question it. 

When they get back to the ship, Viktor wastes no time in recounting the story of how Yuuri cruelly broke some poor guy’s heart because he had a cute dog. Yuuri is never going to live this down.

 

* * *

viii.

* * *

 

Yuuri hates political meetings. It’s his least favorite thing about being a Starfleet Commander. He much prefers it when Viktor goes instead, but they’ve banned him from this particular planet for an incident involving a goat and three thousand credits worth of cheese. Yuuri didn’t ask because he didn’t want to know. Anyway, Starfleet has really been pushing to have Yuuri representing them more often, seeing as he’s somehow the face of the organization now. Yuuri still can’t wrap his brain around the fact that he’s the new poster boy of one of the most reputable organizations in the galaxy. 

“Have fun,” Viktor says, pulling Yuuri into a hug right before he gets on the transport shuttle. “And by ‘have fun’ I mean ‘try not to gouge your eyes out’ because the meeting will be so boring that you’ll want to.”

“See, this is why you’re not allowed to do these things anymore,” Yuuri says with a glare. He hugs Viktor back. “Try not to set the ship on fire while I’m gone. Don’t let Minami into the lab without supervision.”

Yuuri makes it down to Andoria without incident. He bundles up tight in his thick blue Starfleet official coat, braving the short walk from the terminal to the hotel where the conference is taking place. Andoria is beautiful in a severe, icy way. Yuuri tries to appreciate the tall, glassy city but he’s shivering so hard he can barely see. He makes a mental note to stop and buy Mari a post card later. He already knows what he’s going to write on it: “It’s cold here but not as cold as your heart.” She’ll love that. 

The meeting goes well. The conference room is heated, thankfully, and everyone seems to respect him despite the fact that he’s the youngest in the room by about twenty years. The Vulcan ambassador is almost four times his age. Yuuri has never felt more like a child.

“Mr. Katsuki,” the Vulcan, T’sun, says stopping him before he leaves. “Good job on holding your ground in there. I was very impressed.”

“T-Thank you!” Yuuri blushes. “It was a pleasure to meet you.” 

“The pleasure's all mine,” she replies. “My son serves aboard your ship. Saark is an Ensign in the engineering department.”

“Ah, yes! He’s a hard worker.”

T’sun nods. “Again, it was nice to meet you Mr. Katsuki. I’ll let you go on your way.”

Yuuri smiles at her, feeling clumsy with his lack of Vulcan greeting customs. He quickly turns away, shrugging his coat back on and exiting the building. He has a couple more hours to kill until his transport shuttle arrives, so he resolves to hunt around for the perfect postcard for Mari. He thinks he’ll probably be able to send it before they leave the planet system. 

While he’s lost in thought a hand shoots out and pulls Yuuri into an alleyway. He stumbles right into someone’s chest, slipping on the icy ground. 

“What the–”

Yuuri is suddenly acutely aware of the phaser being pressed against his sternum.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” the man holding the phaser and Yuuri drawls. “Remember me?”

Yuuri squints. His mind is going a million miles a minute, trying to figure out the best way out of this situation without losing a vital organ. He studies the man’s sharp features, his ratty hair and big brown eyes and–

“Oh my god,” he gasps. “Elliot Montgomery?”

“Bingo, Yuuri,” Elliot smiles, pressing the phaser firmly against Yuuri’s chest before sliding it up so the tip rests under his chin, tilting his head up. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Likewise,” Yuuri deadpans, though his heart feels like it’s going to burst right out of his ribcage. 

Elliot had been a sophomore at the Academy while Yuuri was a freshman. They had basic chemistry together but they had really only known each other through Viktor. Or rather, through Elliot declaring that he was Viktor’s rival by trying to steal Yuuri’s physics project and replicate his proposed flight patterns. Eventually, Elliot got busted for a completely unrelated cheating scandal and was promptly kicked out of the Academy. Last Yuuri had heard he was a carbon farmer on some dusty moon in the middle of nowhere. 

“You’re coming with me, Yuuri. Starfleet will pay a lot of money to get their precious poster boy back.”

Apparently, Elliot has graduated from carbon farming to space piracy. 

“Listen,” Yuuri says gently. It’s unlikely that Elliot has the phaser set to kill considering he’s trying to exchange Yuuri’s life for money, but it never hurts to be cautious. “I really don’t think you’ve thought this through, Elliot. You just kidnapped me in broad daylight in a United Federation of Planets protected system right after my meeting with dozens of trained, very intelligent officials and you don’t have backup. This isn’t going to work out very well for you, so maybe stop pointing the weapon at me and we can talk?”

“God, Katsuki,” Elliot spits. “I forgot about how annoying you are. Do you always think so much?”

Yuuri shrugs as much as Elliot’s tight grip will let him. “It’s kind of my job to think a lot, so.”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. You’re wrong, by the way, I’m not alone.”

Yuuri opens his mouth to reply but suddenly he’s being smothered by a sharp smelling rag and then everything is fuzzy. 

When Yuuri comes to he’s tied to a chair in what looks to be a storage room. His head pounds and his hands are bound behind his back. He thrashes a little and is pleasantly surprised to find that his cuffs are loose and his phaser is still in his holster. He settles in to wait, figuring that Elliot would want to contact Starfleet sooner rather than later and there would be no point in struggling only to be tied down again later. 

Sure enough, a couple minutes later the storage room door is sliding open with a soft hiss. Elliot and a couple other similarly clothed people shuffle in, filling up the small space quickly. 

“Yuuri, you’re awake!” Elliot says, clapping his hands together with a pleased smile on his face. “I’d like you to meet my crew! Crew, this is Yuuri. We went to college together.”

Yuuri lets out a sharp bark of laughter. “You’re the Captain?”

He turns to the nearest crewmember. “You let this guy tell you what to do? One time in chemistry he almost blew up the building because he forgot to turn the gas off.”

“Shut up!” Elliot snaps. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“You mentioned money earlier, though I can’t imagine why you’d pick me as a hostage.”

“The plan was originally to kidnap Nikiforov, but they sent you down instead. This works out better for my plan anyway, so thank you, Yuuri. You’re here because I’m exacting my revenge.”

“Revenge?” Yuuri tries not to snort. Elliot is only a couple inches taller than Yuuri and looks like he’s about twelve years old despite actually being older. 

“Yes, revenge. On the institution that disgraced me and on the man that single handedly ruined my life! Both Nikiforov and Starfleet will be devastated by your absence, I’m sure of it.”

“Ugh,” Yuuri sighs. “You sound like a Bond villain.”

“Bond?”

“It’s an old Earth thing, he’s like a– you know what? Nevermind. This is ridiculous, untie me and let me contact my ship before you drag us into a firefight and we all die.”

A few of the crew blanche. They look towards Elliot to guidance.

“You talk too much,” Elliot says, producing some duct tape to gag Yuuri with. “There, much better.”

“Boss, I don’t want to die. Maybe we should just let him go. I hear there’s good money in the smuggling industry,” one of Elliot’s goons says. 

“Nope. Nikiforov will be contacting us shortly. All we have to do is wait for the money to come pouring in.”

“But what if he doesn’t call? What if he hasn’t noticed Katsuki’s disappearance yet?”

“Don’t worry,” Elliot says. “There’s no way Nikiforov would leave his first officer.”

“No, but he might call for backup. We can’t fight all of Starfleet.”

“He won’t call for backup,” Elliot smirks. “They’ll take too long and plus Katsuki here is his favorite. You should have seen them at university.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, isn’t that right,  _ Yuuri? _ Your boyfriend is gonna run in guns ablazing, right into our trap. And then we’ll have a Starfleet Commander  _ and _ his Captain to bargain with. Start planning, boys, we’re gonna be rich!”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. He begins to work his wrists free of the metal cuffs, eternally glad for his petite bone structure and the fact that the pirates were dumb enough to use standard size cuffs instead of smaller ones. 

“Boss!” one of the pirates calls from across the ship. “Incoming transmission from the Enterprise.”

“Ah, see? It took him what, less than an hour?” Elliot drawls, sidling up to Yuuri. “C’mon let’s go say hi to your boyfriend.” 

Yuuri grimaces around his gag. He has vivid fantasies about smashing Elliot’s face in.

They shuffle through the tight corridors, making their way to what Yuuri assumes will be a communications room. It turns out to be five monitors stacked on top of some old books. Like actual paper books, what is this the twenty-first century? Two of the monitors are held together with ducktape, the same kind that’s currently being used to gag Yuuri. He wonders how this hunk of metal manages to float more than a meter without falling to pieces. Leo’s faced is stretched out on the biggest, centralized monitor. He looks about ready to kill someone. 

“This is the Enterprise hailing… did you really name your ship ‘The Skull Crusher’?”

“This is Elliot Montgomery, Captain of The Skull Crusher,” Elliot preens. “Let me speak to your Captain.”

Leo glares. “You’re gonna wish you hadn’t.”

The line switches over, treating everyone to the lovely sight of Viktor looking mad as hell and ready to tear people apart with his bare hands. It’s probably not appropriate given the situation, but Yuuri finds this incredibly hot. 

“Viktor! Long time, no see, buddy!” Elliott greets. 

“Elliot,” Viktor replies, eyes narrowing into slits. “Last I heard you’d fallen into a black hole.”

“Boy, don’t you wish that was true,” Elliot says grinning.

“I believe you have something of mine. I’d like to get him back, preferably without spilling blood but I’m not in a very merciful mood right now.”

“Hmm? Oh, you mean our precious little Yuuri?” Elliot pushes Yuuri closer to the monitor. “He’s grown a lot since our university days, hasn’t he? Does he still cry when he has to kill the lab mice? So cute!”

Yuuri glares. He  _ does  _ cry when he needs to kill the lab mice.

“Let him go.”

“Get me five million credits and he’s yours, pretty boy.”

“Wow,” Viktor scoffs. “I forgot about how much of a dick you are.”

“Hey, you should be nicer to me,” Elliot says, pulling Yuuri closer to him. “You wouldn’t want anything to happen to your lovely first officer, would you Captain?”

“If you lay a finger on him I will personally make sure that you don’t have any left when they find your body.”

Yuuri watches the pissing contest progress with mild amusement. In the time that they’ve been hurling insults at each other Yuuri has already figured out at least five escape routes, three of which are fairly solid. He waits patiently for them to stop baiting each other so he can knock everyone on this trash pile of a ship out and go home. 

“You have an hour, Nikiforov, or Yuuri starts losing limbs. Anything you want to say?”

Elliot rips the duct tape off Yuuri’s mouth. 

“Yuuri, I’m coming for you,” Viktor says urgently, flashing him a charming smile. “I’m your knight in shining armor! I’ll rescue you, don’t worry.”

“You’re taking this too seriously,” Yuuri replies, shaking his head. “Don’t waste your time. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

“Don’t take it seriously? They kidnapped you! I’ll be there soon, okay? Just hang on for me, you’ll be out of there in no time.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. “Bye, Viktor.”

“Wait–!”

Yuuri turns back towards Elliot, who’s frowning. 

“Twenty minutes?”

Yuuri sighs. “Yes. You’re incredibly stupid, by the way. What kind of a pirate doesn’t bother to check if their prisoners are armed?”

“What?”

“See? Stupid.” Yuuri sighs again. And then he wriggles his wrist out of his cuffs and pulls his phaser out from his holster, stunning Elliot right between the eyes. Yuuri quickly and systematically works his way through the ship, stunning anyone on sight. He leaves the control room for last because, while he can fly most spacecrafts, he doesn’t want to risk trying to fight off the remaining crew  _ and _ figuring out how to pilot this dumpster of a ship. 

“Ridiculous,” Yuuri mutters to himself, holstering his weapon again. “Didn’t even put up a fight. What kind of space pirates are they?”

Yuuri pings the Enterprise’s location and charts a course towards it. He tries to hail them, but he’d accidentally shot the control panel earlier and it’s starting to spark a lot. He doesn’t risk touching it. It doesn’t matter: the Enterprise opens up hangar 3 for Yuuri to dock in. He waits impatiently for the ship to lock down, eager to get back to his room and just take a nap. Being in a hostage situation is stressful.

As soon as the ship is locked in fully and the cabin has repressurized the doors burst open. Viktor storms in, his phaser cocked and a team of security officers flanking him. 

“Yuuri!” he calls. “I’ve come to rescue you!”

Yuuri stares at him blankly. He gestures to the various unconscious space pirates with his recently discharged phaser. 

“Oh, Captain,” he deadpans. “Save me.”

Viktor lowers his weapon, striding forward to pull Yuuri into a tight hug. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay. Did they hurt you?”

“They had maybe two brain cells, collectively. I’m fine, Viktor.”

Yuuri squirms out of Viktor’s arms and exits the ship. Viktor trails him like a lost puppy. Yuuri motions for the security officers to transfer the pirates to the med bay. They’ll deal with them later. For now, Yuuri needs some food and a nap. 

“Yuuri!” Minami hurtles himself at Yuuri, seemingly appearing out of thin air. “You’re safe!”

Minami is closely followed by Phichit, who sandwiches Yuuri in from behind like the sneaky bastard he is. Viktor takes this opportunity to drape himself over the three of them, enveloping Yuuri in the most uncomfortable hug of his entire life. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Chris sprinting down the corridor towards them.

Scratch that. Yuuri needs some food, a nap, and for people to stop flinging themselves at him. 

Later, after he’s been declared unharmed by Seung-gil and after he’s given his statement for the official report, Yuuri finds himself on the opposite side of the ship from his room. He sighs deeply. He’s been sighing a lot today. 

“Viktor,” he says, turning to the man who hadn’t left his side since he landed. “I need to sleep. Your room is closer.”

Viktor nods rapidly, tugging Yuuri along by his sleeve and rambling on about how he needed to rest after such a traumatic experience. Yuuri is too exhausted to tease him about being a mother hen. When they get to Viktor's room Yuuri immediately strips off his shirt and pants and collapses into Viktor's bed, curling himself up underneath the plush comforter. 

“Um,” Viktor says. “Should I just-”

“Stay,” Yuuri mumbles sleepily, lifting a corner of the blanket and motioning for Viktor to lie down. “Sorry about stealing your room but it was closer and not full of Phichit's hamsters so: infinitely better than mine.”

Viktor slides in beside Yuuri, curling an arm around him protectively. 

“As much as I'm glad that you can handle yourself bad situations, I'd appreciate it if you never did that again. You scared the shit out of me.”

“It's not like I  _ chose  _ to be kidnapped,” Yuuri grumbles. 

“Still. I thought Minami was going to explode, he was so angry. Also, little Yurio tried to bully his way onto the rescue team. So cute, our children!” 

Yuuri smiles. “You weren't much better. I've never seen you so angry.”

“Of course I was angry. I'd burn down the whole galaxy for you, you know this.”

Yuuri most certainly did  _ not  _ know that.

He feels like something unspoken is passing between them but he's just too tired to wonder about the way Viktor is looking at him, or the feeling of lying next to him quietly. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor starts. “I–”

“I told you, it’s not a big deal, Viktor,” Yuuri says, sitting up. “I’m fine! Look!”

“But it is a big deal!” Viktor snaps suddenly. “They– They took you away from us. From me. They were idiots, like you said. You could’ve been hurt or– or–! I know you struggle with your self esteem, but just accept the fact that I–”

Viktor cuts himself off, turning away. He breathes in deeply.

Yuuri gently lays a hand on Viktor’s arm.

“You what, Viktor?” he says softly.

“I… Well,” Viktor smiles sadly, his bangs obscuring his eyes. “You already know. And I can see that I’m starting to make you uncomfortable, so I’ll just go.”

Yuuri opens his mouth to protest, but Viktor is already leaving. 

“Let me know if you need anything. You have the next few days off while you recover.”

Yuuri has no idea what just happened. He thinks that he may have misunderstood their conversation, but he’s too tired to try to puzzle things out now. He lays back down and pulls the covers up to his chin, drifting off to sleep surrounded in Viktor’s comforting scent.

* * *

 

ix. 

* * *

 

Yuuri loves his job, he really does, but sometimes he thinks he would be much happier living a quiet life on some deserted moon, farming space particles or something.

Minami accidentally set fire to a lab station,  _ again, _ which means that Yuuri needs to file an incident report. Which involves going up to Viktor’s Official Captain’s Office, the one that he never uses except to lounge around in when he’s feeling particularly full of himself. Or when he wants to make fun of Yuuri for actually doing things the official Starfleet way by filing paperwork.

“No one does paperwork, Yuuri!” Viktor crows from where he’s draped elegantly over the side of the couch he keeps in his office for the express purpose of pissing Yuuri off. It’s a hideous shade of yellow and the only reason Yuuri hasn’t ejected it out of the garbage chute is because he can’t lift it into the hatch. “I’ve never seen a piece of paper before,  _ in my life. _ Why can’t you just clean things up and let it go like a normal irresponsible commanding officer?”

“Vitya, you have seen paper, our college textbooks were made of paper,” Yuuri sighs.

“Exactly. I’ve never seen paper because I’ve never used our textbooks.”

“How did you graduate?” Yuuri asks incredulously. 

“With honors,” Viktor replies smugly. 

Yuuri rolls his eyes. He rifles through the stacks of neglected reports on Viktor’s desk, trying to figure out which pile to put his incident report on. The corner of a manila envelope catches his eye. Yuuri pulls it out, not paying attention to Viktor’s droning in the background. He flips it open, curious. 

Dozens of smaller files pour out, each one stamped with the Starfleet official seal and bearing a resume stapled to the top. Yuuri squients, shifting through the various faces and names, trying to figure out why Viktor has dozens of new officer files on his desk when they hadn’t requested any additions to the crew since they got Minami. He looks closer, searching for a thread of commonality. Behind him, Viktor has switched over to ranting about the lack of hot baths on the ship. 

“Oh,” Yuuri says softly when it clicks. He stares down at the files, hoping that he’s wrong.

“Viktor, why do you have so many first officer applications on your desk?”

“–don’t even get me started on the  _ soap quality _ – wait, what? Yuuri, what are you looking at?” Viktor bounces up from the couch and crosses over to the desk, eyes trained on the folders in Yuuri’s hands. 

“Ah, those. Not important,” Viktor says, rushed. “Doesn’t matter! Weren’t you supposed to be filing something? You don’t need to look at–”

“These are first officer applications, aren’t they?” Yuuri glares accusingly. He flips through some more. “You wrote notes on some of them. ‘ _ Doesn’t work well under pressure; wouldn’t get along with Chris’  _ Viktor, what is this?”

“I was just… just looking at some, um,” Viktor winces. “Starfleet wanted me to look into some, uh,  _ alternates  _ for your position _. _ ”

“You’re… you’re replacing me?” Yuuri asks, hurt. He whips his head up to look at Viktor. “You’re replacing me.”

“I’m not!” Viktor insits. “I’d never. Starfleet just wanted me to pick someone, just in case–”

“Starfleet wanted you to pick one of  _ them? _ ” Yuuri grabs a file at random. “Quomsum Tueed. He’s eighty! He’d never be able to handle my job.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor says as he takes a step towards him. “Just wait a second–”

“And,” Yuuri plucks another file from the stack. “Casey Eckerman? A good officer, sure, but she’s under qualified. This is ridiculous. I can’t believe you. We’re supposed to be in this together, Viktor.  _ How could you _ ?”

“Yuuri,” Viktor says again, this time more firmly. He reaches out slowly and wraps his hand gently around Yuuri’s wrist. “Stop. Listen to me for a second.”

Yuuri peers up at him anxiously. He feels betrayed. He feels vaguely like a jealous lover catching his boyfriend looking at dating profiles. He feels sick and angry and not at all like listening but he stops anyway because he’ll always listen if Viktor’s the one talking. 

“I’m  _ not _ replacing you,” Viktor says, soft but sure. He brings a hand up to cup Yuuri’s face. “I don’t think I could even if I tried.”

“Then what–?”

“Starfleet wants you to step down.”

Yuuri laughs, high and hysterical. He wrenches himself from Viktor’s grip and stumbles over to collapse into the couch across from Viktor’s desk. “Impossible. I’d never leave the Enterprise. Why would they think that even for a second I’d ever leave?”

“You’re too valuable to be up here with us, Yuuri,” Viktor says quietly, settling down to couch next to him. “They want you back on Earth. To boost morale and convince more people to join the Academy. Last I heard they’re trying to clear our Lilia’s position so they can give it to you instead.”

“They want me on Earth? Vitya, I don’t understand.”

“They made you into the face of Starfleet. It makes sense that they want you back on home base and not running around the uncharted parts of the cosmos with an inexperienced Captain and a third-rate crew,” Viktor says, smiling bitterly. “I can’t blame them. You’re too good for us.”

“Okay, first of all,” Yuuri snarls, anger reignited. “Don’t you  _ ever  _ talk about our crew like that again. Secondly, don’t you ever talk about  _ yourself _ like that again. You made Captain in half the time it usually takes; you’re not inexperienced, you’ve just accomplished more things quicker than most do. Do you really think I’m not happy here? I wouldn’t have signed onto an exploration vessel if I didn’t want to explore, you idiot.”

“Oh,” Viktor breathes out. 

“Yeah. Did you try telling Starfleet that this was a dumb idea and that maybe they should’ve asked me first before trying to get you to replace me?”

“They insisted. They just sent the files over. I had orders to pick one.”

“Right,” Yuuri sets his jaw, determined. “Let Admiral Yakov know we’re on our way back to the Artemis Space Station. We’re going in person to fix this mess.”

Viktor looks stunned. Yuuri feels self conscious, briefly berating himself for talking to Viktor so harshly. But then Viktor is beaming at him and tackling him into a hug. He laughs, bright and full of sunlight, as he pins Yuuri beneath him. Yuuri giggles lightly, pulling a hand up to run through Viktor’s soft silver hair. 

“I’ll get on it right away. We’re not going down without a fight.”

Leo manages to get through to Starfleet and schedules their return back. The trip doesn’t take nearly as long as it should and Yuuri doesn’t ask but he’s sure that Chris and Zaira were pulling some less-than-legal piloting maneuvers. Yuuri doesn’t mind, though. The sooner they can get everything worked out, the sooner Viktor can toss those first officer candidate files into the waste disposal chute. 

The dock at the Artemis Space station too quickly for Yuuri to appreciate its hulking, massive beauty. It looks a little like its own planetary system, asymmetrical in a way that shouldn’t work according to the laws of physics. The station looks like it punched gravity in the face. Yuuri loves it.

“You grew up here?” Yuuri asks Viktor quietly as they wait for the all-clear to disembark. 

“Mmhm!” Viktor hums cheerfully, bouncing back on his heels. “Eighteen years! I don’t miss it one bit.”

It seems as though the reverse isn’t true. Yuuri notices how many people stop as they march down the sleek station hallways. Viktor commands attention wherever he goes, but here it’s like watching a god walk amongst men. He’s regarded with a fearful sort of awe that makes Yuuri slightly uncomfortable. Yuuri has seen Viktor loopy from sleep deprivation with whip cream on his face and a calculus book balanced on his stomach. These people look at him like the concept of his humanity is something too farfetched to even be considered. 

No one greets them the entire way to Admiral Yakov’s office.

The Admiral’s office is very much like the rest of the space station: gunmetal grey and severe looking. Yuuri is intimidated by the interior design, alone. He almost faints when the doors slide open to reveal the Admiral’s lined, frowning face.

“Yakov!” Viktor greets, smiling distinctly like a shark. “It’s good to see you again!”

“Vitya,” Admiral Yakov nods, and then, gruffly: “Commander Katsuki. It’s a pleasure.”

“Cut the shit, Yakov!” Viktor continues cheerfully, plopping himself down into one of the chairs by the desk. “You know why we’re here.”

Yuuri sets himself down more gently. He knows that if anyone else but Viktor tried to treat Admiral Yakov like this they’d be on a waste disposal ship to the nearest solar dump within the hour. He has plans to tread carefully. 

“Ah, yes, you’re here to try to convince me to pull Katsuki’s candidature for Lilia’s position. It’s not going to happen. Katsuki, you are our first choice for her replacement. Nothing short of a total catastrophe can get us to reconsider.”

“A catastrophe can be arranged,” Viktor says threateningly, still smiling. 

“Admiral, while I’m extremely flattered to receive the offer, I’m going to have to decline. I’m just not suited for this position.”

“Right, well,” the Admiral sighs. “It is not an offer. It is an order.”

“My contract with the Enterprise isn’t finished, sir. I have four more years.”

“That is easily fixed. A first officer is easily replaced, the head of Starfleet’s science department is not. Your file says that you grew up on Earth, surely you are feeling a little homesick. The position would suit you well and boost science admissions as well as non-engineered applicant rates. It should be an honor to be considered the face of Starfleet, Commander Katsuki.

“Now,” Yakov sighs, turning to face Viktor with the facial expression one might use to placate a whining toddler. “As for Mr. Katsuki’s replacement, I take it you’ve looked through the files? Some of the candidates are very promising especially when you consider they would have to work with your unusual leadership style. You should get along fine with–”

Yuuri snaps. He throws all his plans about treading carefully out the window.

“Viktor is  _ mine, _ my captain, not anyone else’s. And the Enterprise is  _ our  _ ship. I will not leave my crew in the middle of my contract. There will be no replacing me.”

Both the Admiral’s and Viktor’s attention snaps to Yuuri, fuming in his chair. 

“No one understands how the Enterprise functions better than I do, not even Viktor. I know every single one of our crew’s names, how they function in their department, and who is best suited for which jobs. Not only that, but I successfully completed a double specialization while at the Academy  _ and _ I graduated ahead of time. My skills as a Commander and as a science officer are wasted if you stick me in an office during the prime of my career.”

Yuuri glares at the Admiral. He notes absently that Viktor’s face is lit up with his heart-shaped grin. 

“You will let me serve out my contract on the Enterprise to completion or I will resign from Starfleet, here and now.”

The office is dead quiet as Yuuri’s words sink in. Immediately, he feels like the biggest idiot in the cosmos. He just tried to keep his job by threatening to quit. 

Then, Yakov cracks a small smile. 

“I knew there was a spine somewhere in there, Katsuki,” Admiral Yakov says. “Impressive, speaking to two superior officers like this. You have determination, much like Lilia.”

“I’d do anything for my crew and Captain,” Yuuri says. “Sir.”

“Nothing you said is incorrect. I’m inclined to agree that you would be wasted in an office space, much like Lilia was when they first assigned her to her station. Very well. I will protect your contract on the Enterprise.”

Yuuri breathes out a sigh of relief. 

“Oh, and, if I may,” Yuuri says. “I’d like to nominate Minako Okukawa for the position. She’s more than qualified.”

“She is retired, is she not?” Admiral Yakov frowns. “Alright, Katsuki. I will give her a call.” 

Yuuri relaxes back into his chair, satisfied. Viktor, on the other hand, leans forward and glares accusingly at Admiral Yakov. 

“You planned this. You were never going to force Yuuri to take the position. You just wanted us to beg.”

“No, Vitya, I wanted to see if you would actually act your rank for once and demand that Katsuki stay on board with you. I was pleasantly surprised to find Katsuki willing to boss me around when usually you are the one doing it. Yes, you two are a good match. I look forward to seeing the work you’ll do in the future.”

Viktor pouts. “I was worried for nothing. I cried, Yakov! Genuine tears!”

“Insolent boy, you know the entire damn board of directors has a soft spot for you. You would’ve gotten what you wanted eventually. Though, while you’re safe for now, I cannot guarantee that Starfleet won’t try again once your contract is over. Keep an eye out, Katsuki. Try not to impress us too much.”

Yuuri finds himself slowly warming up to the Admiral. Viktor and Admiral Yakov catch up for a bit and Yuuri is content to sit back and watch them interact, like a grandparent scolding a schoolboy. Viktor somehow also manages to weasel out the Admiral’s approval for an expanded medical staff and a looser supply run schedule. They leave the Admiral’s office victorious.

“Ah, it was nice seeing Yakov again! And you, Yuuri, you never fail to surprise me,” Viktor says grinning. “I’m  _ yours, _ am I? I had no idea you were so possessive!”

“Shut up,” Yuuri says. “We got what we wanted, let’s just go back to the ship and–”

“ _ Vitya!”  _

Yuuri whips his head around to stare down the hallway where a tall woman is sprinting towards them at breakneck speed, yelling something in a language that Yuuri thinks is Russian but he can’t tell with the way that she’s screeching. Yuuri’s hand automatically flies to where his phaser is resting in his holster, ready to protect his Captain no matter what.

“Mama!” Viktor exclaims and then he’s bounding off to meet her. The two crash together in the middle of the hallway, a tangle of long limbs and silver hair. Yuuri is gobsmacked.

The two babble excitedly in Russian, talking over each other and interrupting and layering their voices together like a song. 

“Mama,” Viktor breaks through, in english. “This is Yuuri! I’ve told you about him, my first officer.”

“ _ Zdravstvuyte, _ ” Yuuri greets, bowing a little. “It’s a pleasure to meet–”

“Yuuri Katsuki! Finally!” Viktor’s mother exclaims, pulling Yuuri into the impromptu Nikiforov cuddle pile. “A pleasure! Vitya talks about you all the time, always  _ Yuuri this  _ and  _ Yuuri that  _ and  _ Yuuri was so handsome today–” _

“Mama, please,” Viktor whines. Yuuri snorts and is about to say something when he gets a good luck at Viktor’s mother. 

She’s beautiful in a strong, solid way. She has the same silver hair as Viktor, though pulled into a bun. Her eyes are a bright violet, pupils slitted when they should be rounded. Her cheekbones are high and angular like cliff faces or crystals. She’s undeniably not human but in a subtle way that Sirens and people of their descent tend to be. Yuuri takes in her tall, slim frame and her perfect face and perfect eyes and perfect Captain’s uniform and–

“Oh my god,” Yuuri gasps. “You’re–”

“Ah, yes! Where are my manners!” Viktor’s mother laughs heartily and pulls herself up, brushing a hand up to smooth back her bangs. “I’m Captain Katya, of the Siren Planetary Guard and Space Fleet.”

Yuuri nearly faints. 

Captain Katya is more myth than person at this point. Yuuri has heard countless stories about how the Sirens swooped in to save their closest ally, the Earth, from certain doom. At the helm, Captain Katya, who could outfly anyone in any ship. The Sirens are technically part of the United Federation of Planets but they keep their own Space Fleet, probably so that Starfleet doesn’t try to steal away their best like Captain Katya. 

“I-It’s such an honor!” Yuuri stutters, stumbling to his feet.  

“Charmed!” Viktor’s mother smiles and it’s the same heart-shaped grin that Viktor wears so often. 

Viktor, still on the floor, clears his throat. “Mama, I thought you were away on a mission?”

“Yes but when I heard my Vitya was coming back to visit I knew I had to come back! I nearly busted my warp core trying to get back here in time to catch you, and boy am I glad I did!”

“You, Yuuri Katsuki,” she purrs, gripping Yuuri’s hands tightly between her own. “Are absolutely  _ delicious. _ ”

Yuuri squeaks. 

“ _ Stop,” _ Viktor whines. “Yuuri isn’t yours, leave him alone.”

“I’m just teasing, Vitya!” 

Captain Katya’s communicator chirps suddenly, drawing her attention away from her son and his very flustered first officer. Yuuri thanks his lucky stars.

“Oh, Yakov isn’t happy with me,” she frowns. “Well! It looks like I have to go and sit patiently while he yells at me for half an hour. I want to get to know you more, Yuuri, since you are so special to my Vitya. Let’s meet for dinner later, yes?”

Without waiting for an answer she breezes past Yuuri and towards the doors of Admiral Yakov’s office. 

“Yakov, my old friend!” Yuuri hears her call out before the doors to the Admiral’s office slide shut and Viktor and Yuuri are alone in the hallway again.

“I maybe missed her more than I thought I would,” Viktor muses. “No matter! We’ll see her later for dinner. C’mon, Yuuri.”

They resume their walk down the hallway for a while. Yuuri has  _ so many questions. _

“You didn’t tell me you were half Siren,” he says. 

“Yes, well,” Viktor waves a hand dismissively. “It never came up. Human and Siren physiology is similar enough that no one guesses, and I take after my father more anyway.”

“You also didn’t tell me that your mom is Captain Katya.”

Viktor stops walking. 

“Is it a problem?” he asks, shoulders tense.

“No?” Yuuri puts a tentative hand on Viktor’s arm. “Why would it be?”

“Oh, nothing just I–” Viktor gulps heavily. He resumes walking, linking their arms together like school children. “I don’t like people knowing. I don’t like being compared to her.”

“Vitya, no one can compare to you. You are a hurricane of a human being,” Yuuri says before he can stop himself.

Viktor stares at him, awed, like Yuuri had just handed him a Nobel Peace Prize or something. 

“I am a little hurt, though,” Yuuri continues, waving a hand. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie!” Viktor squawks. “I just… omitted some details.

“You told me your mom was an average pilot, not  _ the best pilot in the galaxy _ ,” Yuuri says accusingly. He’s more than a little hurt. He’s told Viktor every mundane detail about his own life, his own parents. He thought that kind of intimacy went both ways. 

“You think she’s the best pilot in the galaxy?” Viktor asks, affronted. “Not me?”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. 

“Of course  _ I _ think you’re the best. But she has the actual title. That’s not the point. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, at first I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you’d ask me to get her autograph for you,” VIktor smiles bitterly. “If you asked me for my  _ mother’s  _ autograph I couldn’t handle that, not from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Yuuri frowns. 

“You know,” Viktor rolls his eyes. 

Yuuri stares at him, unimpressed. Eventually Viktor cracks and elaborates. 

“Besides the  _ obvious _ , I mean, I was begging you to be my copilot for months. I wanted you to switch programs because you wanted to fly with  _ me,  _ not Captain Katya’s son.”

_ The obvious? _ Yuuri resolves to figure whatever that is later. For now, he swats Viktor lightly on the arm.

“You’re an idiot,” Yuuri snorts. “I was never going to switch over, Captain Katya’s son or not. But if I did, it would be because you’re my dumbass best friend and I don’t want you to die doing dumb things, like trying to do a barrel roll in an asteroid field.”

Viktor’s entire face lights up. Yuuri can feel himself blushing. 

“Aw, Yuuri! Is this you admitting you would reconsider going back to school and entering the piloting program?”

“No,” he says as he rolls his eyes. “C’mon, let’s get back to the ship and get ready. What time did we tell your mom that we’d meet her for dinner?”

 

* * *

x.

* * *

 

Another thing on the long list of bullshit political events that Starfleet makes them go to is the annual Galactic Gala. Yuuri hates it with every fiber of his being. He’d been forced to go even before he was an official Starfleet officer, a consequence of being Starfleet’s cutest non-genetically engineered pet. The only upside was that Viktor was forced to go, too. While Yuuri was still in school and Viktor was working his way up the chain of command the Galactic Gala was the only time in the year that they’d get to see each other. 

Galactic Gala. Yuuri even hates the  _ name,  _ Starfleet couldn’t be more uncreative if they tried. 

Yuuri checks his mini data tablet for the time, tapping his foot impatiently. He and Viktor need to be at the banquet hall in fifteen minutes and they’re still on the ship. He sighs, resigning himself to being fashionably late, as he always is whenever he shows up to events with Viktor “doesn’t-know-what-a-clock-is” Nikiforov. 

All his previous annoyance is forgotten when Viktor finally makes his appearance. Yuuri feels like he just had the breath punched out of him. 

He watches, stunned, as Viktor sweeps onto the bridge like the damn prince charming that he is. He’s wearing a traditional Earth suit and tie, like Yuuri, except Viktor fills out the shoulders much better. He’s wearing a pink suit jacket that would look tacky on anyone else but looks absolutely ethereal on Viktor, the gold accents catching the light as if he was made of starlight himself. Viktor’s silver hair is styled to perfection, as it always is, shimmering with some kind of leave-in glitter that– again!– should be tacky but somehow,  _ somehow, _ makes his hair look like moonstone. Viktor smiles when he sees Yuuri, his mouth curling up softly at the corners.

Yuuri has been enamored for  _ years _ but somehow Viktor still manages to steal his breath away. He feels like he did the first time they met. He feels like a fumbling schoolboy in those vintage movies Phichit likes to watch, standing at the foot of the stairs while his prom date descends slowly into his arms 

Except, Yuuri is not a vintage schoolboy and Viktor isn’t his prom date. The illusion is shattered as soon as Viktor opens his mouth. 

“That tie is hideous,” Viktor says, frowning. “Wait here, I’ll get you one of mine.”

“Wait, no! We’re already late!” Yuuri calls but Viktor has already disappeared back into the turbolift. Yuuri clutches his chest, willing his heart to  _ slow the hell down, it’s just Viktor, oh my god. _

He’s so,  _ so  _ glad that the rest of the crew has shoreleave. He’s certain that if Chris saw him now the teasing would never end. 

“Yuuri!” Viktor hums, returning now with a silk pink tie in hand. “You can wear this one. Now we match!”

“I don’t know what was wrong with my old one,” Yuuri grumbles even as he’s reaching up to loosen the knot, pulling the offending tie off. 

“Let me,” Viktor murmurs, stepping in close. He smells like adventure and light and fluffed up, pastel nebulas and Yuuri is _ such _ a goner. Viktor works quickly, deft fingers fluttering over Yuuri’s collarbone, tying his tie with expert ease. When he’s done, he lingers for a moment, smiling down at Yuuri like something from another world. 

“W-We should go,” Yuuri says, nudging Viktor backwards towards the turbolift. “Yakov will yell at us again.”

“Mmhm,” Viktor hums in acknowledgement, eyes still trained on Yuuri’s tie. Yuuri is certain that he’s blushing bright red so he distracts the both of them by ushering Viktor down to the hangar so they can fly Makkachin down to the planet’s surface. This year the Gala is on Altea, a beautiful planet full of flowers and slow-flowing water. 

Yuuri catches their reflection and he and Viktor stride into the banquet hall. He tries valiantly to ignore just how  _ good _ they look together. It’s a losing battle. 

The first half of the night is passed mostly in fake smiles and hollow greetings. Yuuri is reminded again of why he hates these events so much. If another dusty, old Starfleet official comments on Yuuri’s “young and inexperienced” crew Yuuri might actually start a fight. 

“No, they _ aren’t  _ difficult to manage,” Yuuri says through his teeth, for the millionth time. “Just because our crew is mostly young recruits doesn’t mean we can’t function just like any other starship.”

Thankfully, Viktor comes to his rescue just before Yuuri starts seriously contemplating murder. 

“I hate this!” he announces cheerfully. “Let’s steal some alcohol and sneak out!”

Viktor takes Yuuri’s hand, towing him along as he weaves his way through the crowd. They’re stopped a couple of times but Viktor always knows how to say just the right thing to get everyone to leave them alone without looking rude. Viktor leads him out of the hall and down a corridor to a small balcony overlooking the royal gardens. 

“Oh,  _ wow! _ ”

Yuuri has never seen a garden like it. The plants are lit up like starlight, the bioluminescence casting a soft blue glow over the grounds below. Smaller lights flit about, the Altean equivalent to fireflies Yuuri thinks. He marvels at the bright pinks and dusty teals of the flowers; wonders at the deep blues of their leaves. The warm glow of the castle behind them contrasts with the cool tones of the night and there, caught in the twilight between the two, is Viktor. Yuuri’s breath catches. The moonlight bathes the entire scene in a delicate light, bouncing off of Viktor’s hair and Yuuri thinks about clouds, about pearls, about the metallic gleam of a spacecraft as it glides through nothingness.

“Altea is beautiful, isn’t it?” Viktor murmurs, leading Yuuri to lean up against the balcony, further into the moonlight. It’s always like this: Viktor leads and Yuuri, caught up in his storm, follows. 

“Yes,” Yuuri answers, too late. He wrenches his gaze away from Viktor’s profile and back down to the garden.

“Although,” Viktor says, smile audible in his voice. “Not as beautiful as you, my Yuuri.”

Viktor lets go of Yuuri’s hand to brush along the arm of Yuuri’s midnight blue suit, settling where his shoulder meets his neck, right above where Viktor’s tie is wrapped around his collar. Yuuri shivers and reminds himself that Viktor is just a very tactile person. Viktor is a shameless flirt, by nature. It really doesn’t mean what Yuuri wants it to mean. 

“You promised me alcohol, Vitya,” Yuuri says, proud that his voice doesn’t shake. 

“Of course,” Viktor giggles, pulling away to reach for a bottle of champagne tucked under his arm. “I’m flying us back later so I can’t have any but don’t let me stop you!”

Yuuri takes it from his hands and promptly guzzles half the bottle. He feels light, golden in a way that he usually never feels. 

“I think that these Galas were specifically designed to cause me the maximum amount of pain,” Yuuri mutters, pulling the bottle away from his mouth with a soft pop.

“They’re not so bad!” Viktor barks out a laugh. “At least you don’t to go alone.”

“This is my personal hell, Vitya. I’m being forced to socialize with people who think it’s okay to talk down to my crew.”

“They’re just jealous that you’re doing twice as well as they are despite being half their age,” Viktor says fondly. “They’re also probably jealous about how good you look doing it, too.”

Yuuri shifts on his feet and then takes another long swig from the bottle, avoiding Viktor’s eyes. 

“Ah,” Viktor winces, smile rueful. “Too much? Sorry, I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s okay,” Yuuri sighs. “I know you don’t mean it.”

Viktor looks at him long and hard. Yuuri continues drinking steadily. 

This has been happening a lot, recently. Not the drinking, the long hard stares. The half spoken sentences. Something has been hanging in the air between them, heavy like the comforting weight of gravity. It’s the kind of tension that leaves Yuuri confused but slightly exhilarated, like he’s standing on a precipice with Viktor at his side, teetering at the edge. The edge of  _ what  _ exactly Yuuri is unsure of but he knows how he feels about Viktor and knows that whatever it is, it will work itself out. He has faith in them. 

So Yuuri lets it go, drinks the alcoholic equivalent for starlight, basks in the lovely Altean night with Viktor by his side and the warmth of the party at his back. 

 

* * *

 

xi.

* * *

 

They get the news about a week late. Yuuri is furious. 

The Eldiri empire has declared war. They’re throwing a fit, angered by the Federation block on some resource or another to their planet systems. As their first act, they’ve taken Earth. It’s been declared a hostage planet, the invading ships forming a blockade. It’s a stupid move on their part, the Federation would disband before allowing Earth to fall. There’s no way for the Eldiri to win, not with the Earth’s many allies already on the way to dismantle the situation. That doesn’t mean Yuuri is any less terrified for his family.

As soon as the information transmission has explained the situation, Yuuri is moving.

“I have to go back!” he says, heading towards the turbolift. He feels shaky, off balanced. 

“Yuuri!” Viktor says, catching him by his wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“They need me,” he snarls, yanking his arm away. He catches the brief flicker of hurt across Viktor’s face, but he can’t bring himself to feel bad about it right now. “My family is there. Earth is my  _ home. _ ”

“Slow down for a second, what are you planning on doing?  Taking one of the spacecrafts? Talking your way through the blockade? They’re calling us back anyway, there’s no point in trying to go by yourself.”

“You don’t understand,” he says. “It’s faster if I take a ship alone. My parents– they live in a small town– they won’t get any government assistance. Protecting my family isn’t priority for Starfleet, I need to go back.”

“You will! We’ll take you, Yuuri, just stay with us. I care about Earth as much as you do.”

“You  _ don’t, _ ” Yuuri hisses. “You don’t care about them. Not the way I do, so don’t pretend to. Viktor, I’m going, get out of my way.”

“Fine, you’re right,” Viktor says, voice cool and dangerously low. Yuuri can see his hands shaking with repressed anger. “I don’t care about them the way you do. I care about  _ you _ . You’re my first officer and my bestfriend and I’m  _ not _ letting you fly off to a designated prisoner planet in a Federation ship during wartime by yourself. Use your head, Yuuri, you could die and I won’t allow that.”

“I–”

“That’s an order, Commander Katsuki,” Viktor snaps. “You’re staying with us.”

Yuuri recoils, as if hit. Viktor has never brought up the fact that he outranks Yuuri,  _ ever. _ He’s always treated Yuuri as more of a co-captain than a first officer. The blatant use of authority stings. He studies Viktor’s face, taking in his wild eyes, the determined set of his jaw. His fingers twitch as if to reach out to Yuuri again; as if to pin Yuuri to his side to make him stay. Yuuri has never hated him more than in that moment.

“Fine,” Yuuri spits. “Permission to leave the bridge,  _ Captain? _ ”

Viktor flinches but nods, gaze softening. 

“I’m sorry,” Viktor says quietly. 

“If they die while I am sitting here uselessly I will  _ never _ forgive you.” 

Yuuri steps into the turbolift, punching the screen for his floor number. He pretends not to see the pained expression on Viktor’s face or the pitying looks that Chris is shooting him. As soon as the lift doors close, he crumbles.

Everything works out, in the end. By the time the Enterprise is docking, the Federation has already politically destroyed the Eldiri and are already working on negotiations. Yuuri isn’t any less upset. He hopes they’re used as an example of what happens when you drag the Earth into petty trade disputes. 

As soon as they touch down he books it to Hasetsu. He barely manages to clear it with Viktor, who almost insisted on waiting until the all clear was given by the Federation. Yuuri threatened to resign, which shut him up pretty quick. 

Yuuri had almost forgotten how much Earth’s gravity weighed on his bones. It’s a comforting weight, like a blanket. He takes a LightRail from San Francisco to Tokyo. He texts his sister while he waits, the train’s sleek body cutting through the Pacific Ocean faster than a bullet. The train reminds him too much of the Enterprise, the darkness yawning out from beyond the windows. Occasionally, the lights of another LightRail will wink in the distance. Yuuri tries not to think about the family he’s leaving behind, focuses on the one he’s racing towards.

Eventually, he arrives in Hasetsu. He’s embarrassed to discover that there are posters of him  _ everywhere,  _ just like Minami said _. _ He has no idea who was behind this but his first instincts point to Minako. It’s unsettling, seeing his own face plastered over every inch of his childhood home.

_ Join Starfleet today!  _ A poster reads out, emblazoned with the Starfleet science division insignia and Yuuri’s hopeful looking face.  _ Become the future! _

Yuuri doesn’t even know what that means. He knew that he’d become the face of Starfleet on Earth, but he didn’t know that would mean the old grocery store on the corner would be selling holographic posters of him. Yuuri use to buy milk from that store. He use to make late night runs in his old, ratty sweatpants and now their windows have his face on them. Everything feels so surreal.

The first thing he does when he gets home is hug his mom. Actually, the first thing he does is run right into the doorway because he’d become so accustomed to the automatic doors on the Enterprise that he’d forgotten that manual doors still exist. The next thing he does is hug his mom.

“Okaasan,” he breathes, curling his body around her shorter, stouter frame. 

“It’s been too long, Yuuri,” she says, patting his head like she use to do when he was five. “I can hardly recognize you.”

“We video chatted last month,” he says. “Also, there are posters of me  _ everywhere.  _ When did this happen?”

“When my son became the most accomplished science officer in Starfleet. Now, come on, I made your favorite. Mari and your father are waiting in the kitchen.”

He only gets to stay a week before they’re calling him back. He’s tempted to make good on his threat and actually resign but he’s not going to leave Viktor without a first officer. Even though he’s angry, he still loves him. 

“Sometimes I wish I’d never handed you that application,” Minako tells him as she watches him buying his ticket back.

“You don’t mean that, Minako-sensei.”

“I don’t.”

“Take care of mom and everyone else for me. Eat lots of katsudon in my honor. I’ll miss you.”

“I miss you right now,” she says, ruffling his hair fondly. “Go on. I know how much you love it up there.”

“I love it more down here,” he admits quietly. 

His train to Tokyo is above ground. Yuuri thinks it’s cruel that he gets to see his countryside whiz past him before he’s stuck on a ship again. He takes it all in, glued to the window the entire time. He watches the ocean, the roiling blue mass of it, twisting and churning. He watches the deep green of the trees, how the rice fields seem to stretch on forever. He watches and watches and watches until all the colors blur together, vivid enough that he still sees spots when he closes his eyes. He wishes he had more time; he wanted to go to the beach and taste the salty air one last time. 

In less than twenty-four hours he’s back on the Enterprise. He watches the Earth as they pull away. He watches until they shift into warp drive, speeding away from the tiny speck of blue containing everything he loves. 

“Yuuri!” Phichit yells, startling him. He throws his arms around Yuuri, clutching him tightly. “We missed you so much.”

Yuuri turns away from the window and towards his crewmates. He catches Viktor’s eye.

Well, almost everything he loves. 

* * *

 

xii.

* * *

 

For the first time since Yuuri met Viktor, things are awkward. 

Yuuri knows, logically, that it’s his fault. He’s avoiding Viktor, sending Minami or one of the other lower ranking officers up the the bridge in his stead. He switches around his own work hours just so that he doesn’t have lunch break at the same time as Viktor. He sends in his daily reports through  _ email,  _ like some sort of 21st century barbarian.

When they do talk, because it’s impossible  _ not  _ to as Captain and first officer, it’s stilted. Viktor keeps shooting him these looks, like a kicked puppy. Yuuri stops making eye contact. He also pretends not to get any of Viktor’s instant messages to his data pad. 

Yuuri wants to fix things. He’s not even angry anymore he just doesn’t know how to approach Viktor. How to apologize while also asking for an apology back because while Yuuri isn’t angry, he’s still a little hurt. He recognizes that Viktor made the right decision as a Captain and a friend but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to be irrationally emotional about it. 

“Yuuri, stop being a dick,” Phichit says bluntly, a week after Yuuri comes back from Hasetsu. 

“I’m not–” Yuuri stops, the denial dying on his tongue. “Yeah, okay, I kind of am.”

“Just talk to him,” Phichit urges. “You’re the best at that. You’re the only one he’ll listen to.”

“But, what if he doesn’t want to talk anymore? Did I wait too long?” Yuuri wrings his hands. “I probably waited too long.”

“You did,” Phichit says, again: pulling no punches. “He’s miserable. Go fix it.”

In typical Yuuri fashion, he waits until the very end of the day to do it, winding himself up and shattering three beakers in fits of nervousness. Things between him and Viktor have always been so easy. Yuuri isn’t use to feeling so wrong-footed, so unable to communicate. On the way to Viktor’s Captain’s quarters Yuuri rehearses what he’s going to say in his head, something he usually only does when talking to strangers. That thought hits him a little too hard. 

Yuuri taps the screen outside of Viktor’s door once. He can hear Viktor’s custom doorbell noise– some bubblegum pop song– ring out from inside. He waits and when Viktor doesn’t answer the door he presses the button again, impatient. 

The door slides open to reveal Viktor, leaning against the frame and looking disheveled and grumpy.

“Ugh,  _ fuck off _ ,” Viktor groans, eyes closed. 

“I-I’ll just go, sorry for bothering you,” Yuuri says, already regretting ever leaving his and Phichit’s rooms. 

“Yuuri!” Viktor yelps, eyes snapping open. “No, wait don’t go! Sorry, I thought you were Chris.”

Yuuri hesitates. 

“Please, come in,” Viktor says, eyes wild and desperate. 

Yuuri steps into the room, the door sliding shut with a soft  _ swish _ behind him. 

He hovers awkwardly, unsure if he should take up his usual perch on Viktor’s couch or not. He picks at his fingernails anxiously, aware of Viktor watching him from the doorway. 

“Did you just get off your shift?” Yuuri asks, even though he knows because he’s the one who scheduled everyone’s work times.

Viktor nods. 

Yuuri opens his mouth, ready to speak, and then he forgets everything he’d planned on saying because Viktor’s looking at him like he’s a woodland creature, careful not to get too close so he doesn’t scare Yuuri away. It breaks his heart. 

“ _ Vitya _ ,” Yuuri exhales, stepping forward to wrap his arms around Viktor’s middle. 

It’s like a dam breaking. 

“I’m sorry,” Viktor says in a rush, clutching Yuuri close and burying his face in Yuuri’s hair. “I-I know how much your family means to you. I’m not sorry for making you stay but I’m sorry I hurt you in the process, I didn’t mean–”

“No, I’m sorry,” Yuuri fumbles. “It was the right thing to do. I’m not even angry I’m sorry I drew this out so long, Vitya.”

“I thought you hated me,” Viktor whispers, swaying softly. 

“ _ Never _ ,” Yuuri promises. “I didn’t mean that. I love you.”

Viktor goes very still. 

“You… do?”

“Of course,” Yuuri frowns, pulling back to look at Viktor. “You’re my best friend. Don’t tell Phichit.”

“O-Oh,” Viktor laughs, high and shaky. “R-Right, of course. Of course.”

“Are we… okay?” Yuuri asks cautiously. Viktor looks worse than when he opened the door. Yuuri thinks he might have messed something up in his apology but he’s not sure what it was. 

“Yes,” Viktor clears his throat, visibly pulling himself together. He flashes Yuuri his familiar heart-shaped smile. “We’re okay, Best friend.”

“Good,” Yuuri beams, pleased. A knot has just loosened up in his chest. “Then, if you’re not too tired, do you want to go down to the artificial gardens with me? There’s this new plant hybrid that glows and we just installed a blacklight. I’ve been dying to show you all week.”

“I’d love to!” Viktor smiles, brightening up even more. 

“By the way,” Viktor says later. “I am  _ definitely  _ telling Phichit that you like me better.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. 

As if that wasn’t obvious enough already. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thanks for reading!! part 3 will be up sooner because my exams finish next week!
> 
> i'm over on tumblr [here](https://somethingsnotquitewrite.tumblr.com/)!!


	3. the right catalyst

* * *

xiii.

* * *

 

Viktor has this bad habit of calling Yuuri up to the bridge just… whenever he feels like it.

“Yuuri!” Viktor says, voice crackling over the comms. “I need you!”

Yuuri tries not to sigh too heavily. He shoves the beaker he’s holding into Minami’s hands.

“Titrate this for me. I have to go see what Viktor wants this time.”

With Viktor, there’s always a fifty-fifty chance it’s actually a serious issue. Sometimes there’s a physics anomaly that requires Yuuri’s attention or they’ll all die. Sometimes, Viktor calls him up just to force him to leave his lab. Yuuri hopes it’s something that can be handled quickly at least, because he’s worried that Minami might trip and spill the acid that Yuuri handed him. He hopes it doesn’t spill on something easily damaged, like a person. Yuuri punches the turbolift screen impatiently.

“There you are,” Viktor says, once Yuuri slides out of the lift. “What kind of first officer leaves their captain waiting so long?”

Yuuri shakes his head fondly. “It’s been thirty seconds.”

“No matter!” Viktor says with a dramatic wave of his hand. He flounces over and takes Yuuri by the elbow, guiding him over and pushing him down into the Captain’s seat.

“What’s going on?”

“Yuuri Katsuki,” Viktor says seriously. “You are about to make the greatest scientific discovery of our time.”

“Okay?”

“Chris!” Viktor calls. “Show us!”

“On it!”

The viewing window clears to reveal a rapidly approaching asteroid.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says calmly. “I don’t mean to alarm you but there’s an asteroid and we’re going to hit it dead on if we don’t move.”

“I know! You’re missing it, Yuuri, look closer!”

Yuuri watches the asteroid hurtling towards them.

“Um,” he says.

“Look at the craters!”

Yuuri squints, leaning forward. He thinks he can make out some vaguely crater-like shapes dotting the asteroid’s surface. They don’t look like they’re patterned, maybe a little clumped but–

“Oh!’ Yuuri gasps. “It looks like a dog!”

“Yes! A fluffy dog!”

“This is amazing!” Yuuri says, face tugging into a grin. He turns around to Leo. “Please tell me you got a picture.”

“I did.”

“We should probably move out of the way now,” Chris reminds them gently.

“Oh, yes. Probably,” Viktor says absently, his attention mostly focused on Yuuri. Yuuri tips his head back in the chair so he’s looking at Viktor upside down. He smiles.

“Thank you for showing me,” he beams. Viktor’s smile mirrors his, eyes crinkling at the corners. They smile ridiculously at each other for a moment before Yuuri peels himself off the chair.

“Well, if that’s all then I should get back to the lab.”

Viktor pouts, but lets him go. Yuuri can’t even be annoyed at the interruption when he’d just seen the coolest thing in his entire life. He tells Minami about it and promises to forward him the pictures that Leo took of the dog asteroid.

Of course, not all of Viktor’s calls go so well.

Yuuri is dead to the world. He just finished an extensive lab write-up and transmitted it to the main Starfleet science database. He submitted it and then immediately left the lab, too tired to bother with clean up. Phichit is somewhere else on the ship, most likely causing trouble, so Yuuri has their rooms all to himself. He changes out of his uniform and promptly collapses face first onto his bed, falling asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.

About an hour later he’s woken up by the shrill sound of his tricorder. Yuuri groans, groping wildly for the device.

“Hello?” he mumbles into the receiver.

“Yuuri!” Viktor yells, voice panicked. “Come quickly! It’s an emergency!”

Yuuri bolts upright, already reaching for his uniform.

“Give me ten minutes.”

“I need you now,” Viktor says urgently. Yuuri drops his jacket and shoves his feet into his shoes, sprinting for the turbo lift. His mind races with possibilities. Were they being attacked? Was there trouble with the Federation? An enemy ship?

“I’m here!” Yuuri yells, sprinting from the turbolift doors straight to Viktor’s side. “What’s going on?”

Viktor turns to look at him, eyes roving up and down. He makes a vaguely choked off noise.

“Are we alright? What’s the emergency?”

“Guh,” Viktor says.

“What’s wrong? Is there a threat?”

Viktor shakes his head. He clears his throat.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says slowly. “What are you wearing?”

Yuuri glances down at himself. He’d run straight there in his pajamas, some old, tight black shorts and a shirt with the faded words ‘If I was an enzyme I’d be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes’ on it. Yuuri blushes.

“You said it was urgent. I was sleeping.”

Viktor gulps visibly.

“I– uh. I just wanted to show you– we found another dog asteroid,” he says, eyes fixed on Yuuri’s legs. “Um.”

“You found another dog asteroid?” Yuuri sighs. “Viktor, I was _sleeping._ I am _exhausted._ You woke me up to see another dog asteroid. I can’t believe you.”

“Wow, Yuuri,” Chris whistles. “You should wear those shorts instead of your uniform pants. You’re hot when you’re angry.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. He glances at the viewing window, noting that the dog asteroid _is_ pretty cute. He’s too annoyed to admit it, though. Yuuri turns on his heel, walking back towards the turbolift.

“I’m going back to bed. If you try to wake me up again I will end you,” he calls over his shoulder. He thinks he hears Viktor whimpering and Chris snickering but he’s honestly too tired to care. Just before the lift doors close Yuuri heard Chris say “Stop staring and get a hold of yourself, Nikiforov,” but he ignores that too.

Yuuri will probably be embarrassed about running up to the bridge in booty shorts later. For now, he wants to sleep.

* * *

vx.

* * *

Something about today is not quite right.

Yuuri can’t put his finger on it but he feels _old._ He feels ancient.

He can’t put his finger on it but something feels… wrong.

 

Yuuri perches on the arm of Viktor’s Captain’s chair lazily. It’s a slow day, mostly just killing time until they can travel to the next planetary system. All of Yuuri’s experiments are done and the reports have been sent in for review by Starfleet’s science board. He passes the time by reorganizing and re-color coding everyone’s shift time charts, fiddling around on his datapad.

“Stardate 1312.4,” Yuuri mumbles into his datapad. “Ship is running smoothly. ETA to Alpha Centauri is about–”

Suddenly the ship shudders and lurches to the right, throwing Yuuri right into Viktor’s lap with a loud cry of screeching metal.

“What was that?!”

“Leo!” Viktor barks. “Get Sara on the line.”

“Got her!”

“Sara, status report!”

“We hit something, Captain,” Sara’s voice filters onto the bridge. “Or, something hit us? Everything’s okay, engines are fine. Just a little shaken up.”

“It came from nowhere, Viktor,” Christophe says, pulling up a million screens from his piloting station. “It wasn’t on the radar, I don’t know–”

Another loud crash.

The lights go out.

 

Yuuri blinks.

He’s perched on the arm of Viktor’s Captain’s chair. Yuuri looks down to see Viktor twiddling his thumbs idly. It’s a slow day. Yuuri looks down at the datapad in his hands and frowns. He should maybe reorder everyone’s shift times. He should also catch up on daily reports.

“Stardate 1312.4,” Yuuri mumbles into his datapad. “Ship is running smoothly. ETA to Alpha Centauri is about–”

Yuuri is interrupted by a sudden jolt that sends him sprawling into Viktor’s lap.

“What was that?!”

Yuuri blinks. Wait.

“Leo!” Viktor barks. “Get Sara on the line.”

Yuuri has a weird feeling about this.

“Got her!”

“Sara, status report!”

“We hit something, Captain,” Sara’s voice filters onto the bridge. “Or, something hit us? Everything’s okay, engines are fine. Just a little shaken up.”

“Viktor,” Yuuri says urgently. “I think something’s––”

Another loud crash.

The lights go out.

 

Yuuri gasps loudly, jerking suddenly and falling off of his perch on the arm of Viktor’s Captain’s chair. He looks around wildly, matching expressions of confusion on the rest of the crew’s face.

“Something isn’t right,” he says, clutching his datapad close to his chest. He checks the date and time.

1312.4

“Yuuri?” Viktor frowns. “What’s going on? Did you feel it, too?”

“Something’s not right,” he repeats, and then braces himself for impact.  

The lights go out.

 

“Your hair is longer,” Yuuri gulps. He slides off of the arm of Viktor’s chair and onto his own two feet. He checks his datapad but he already knows what the stardate is.

“We’re stuck,” Viktor says. “The same few minutes. We don’t have much time– Leo, get me Mila.”

The first collision hits them. Leo curses as he’s thrown from his station. He hits the connecting communication line button from his place sprawled on the floor.

“Mila,” Viktor grits out, one hand steadying Yuuri with a vice like grip on his arm. Well, at least this time Yuuri hadn’t fallen straight into his lap. “What’s going on, is this some sort of attack?”

“No outside interference,” Mila reports. “Have you talked to Sara? Is she okay–?”

The second collision hits.

The lights go out.

 

“Dammit!” Viktor curses. He looks up at Yuuri, perched on the arm of his chair. “What do we do?”

“I timed it,” Yuuri says. “Counted in my head. We have five minutes and thirty-two seconds before everything resets. I think it’s some sort of timeloop? I’ve never even heard of something like this.”

“How do we get out?” Chris asks. “Can we fly the ship away? Is it some kind of space-time pocket?”

“Maybe,” Yuuri says distantly. He checks his timer. “Ten seconds until the first hit.”

Viktor pulls Yuuri down before he can fall. They brace for impact against each other.

“Go into warp drive!” Yuuri shouts.

“What? What if–?”

“Do it! Before the lights go out again!”

Chris’s hands fly over the controls. He checks the systems again. Leo notifies the rest of the ship that they’re jumping.

“Captain?” Chris asks, hand hovering about the controls, waiting for approval.

“Punch it.”

 

Yuuri leaps off of Viktor’s chair. He checks his datapad.

1312.5

“Oh, thank god,” he sighs, sinking to the floor. The rest of the bridge cheers.

“What just _happened_?” Yuuri looks up at Viktor, who’s peering over the arm of his chair to watch the desolate puddle on the floor that use to be his first officer. “How long were we stuck before we noticed? You look like you haven’t shaved in weeks.”

Viktor runs a hand through his slightly stubbly chin. Yuuri would find it very attractive if he wasn’t too busy freaking out about the time loop they just got caught in.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says softly, offering a hand to pull Yuuri up.

“Right,” he says. There’s work to be done, crew members who are also freaking out. Yuuri needs to get his shit together. “Right.”

Yuuri cheats. He sends off explanations to all his chief officers and leaves it to them to explain to the rest of their department. He addresses the ship as a whole for a few seconds to confirm that they’re out of the loop and that anyone who needs to should visit the medbay for a psych eval. Sorry, Seung-gil.

After he’s taken care of things, Yuuri finds himself on the observation deck. It turns out going into warp drive did almost nothing, landing them maybe a couple of meters away from where their last known location was, before they entered the loop. Yuuri looks out at the messy remains of a star system. It looks like someone came through and hacked all the celestial bodies to bits with a chainsaw. After a while, Yuuri hears someone come up behind him. He can tell just from the weight of the steps and the rhythm of the stride that it’s Viktor. They stand next to each other quietly for a couple minutes before Viktor decides to speak.

“It’s a planet graveyard, named Eris,” Viktor whispers. “I looked up the Starfleet file.”

“Eris?”

“Chaos.”

Yuuri nods. He looks out at chunks of empty rock shells illuminated in the weak light of a dying star.

“Something happened here. Millions of years ago, a collision or something. The file says that it was a thriving star system at one point. But now….” Viktor trails off, looking lost.

“We need to alert Starfleet to the presence of the loop. Someone else might fall in and not come out as lucky as we did,” Yuuri traces the swirling clouds of debris with his eyes.

Viktor hums.

“Vitya,” Yuuri murmurs, tugging at Viktor’s sleeve. “Do you think… the time loop was manufactured? By the civilization that use to live here?”

“Maybe,” Viktor hums. “Starfleet wasn’t able to recover much from the debris but what they did find was centuries ahead of any of our technology. If they saw the collision coming maybe they prepared for it. It would explain why no one ever received a distress signal from them.”

“I don’t understand why they would do that. Just… loop, forever. It’s purgatory. Surely there must have been another option, another system they could evacuate to rather than just sit and relive the same couple of minutes for eternity.”

“I think I get it. Haven’t you ever had a moment that you wish would never end?”

Yuuri thinks back to a starlit night amongst many starlit nights, from their days at the academy, when Yuuri snuck Viktor up to the rooftop gardens of the science buildings; giggling and clinging to each other like teenagers. He thinks of turning his head slightly and seeing Viktor’s face in the moonlight, the San Francisco cityscape in the background lit up like christmas lights.

“Yes.”

“And wouldn’t you do anything to protect the people you love, even if it meant dooming them to living a constant loop?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says automatically. “There are very few things I wouldn’t do for the people I love.”

Viktor looks at Yuuri, obviously waiting for _something_ . Yuuri feels a little like he’s being tested, like there’s an answer that Viktor knows already but he’s waiting to hear it from Yuuri anyway. Yuuri feels extraordinarily heavy all of a sudden. He feels like there are chemical reactions just waiting to happen, waiting for the right catalyst, waiting for _Yuuri._

Yuuri takes the coward’s way out, as always.

“We should get started on the incident report,” Yuuri says, pulling away from the viewing port.

He hears Viktor sigh from behind him but he doesn’t turn around.

After a moment, Viktor follows. 

* * *

 xv.

* * *

Yuuri wakes up to loud pop music and a face full of confetti.

“Happy birthday, Yuuri!”

Yuuri opens his eyes to find the entire core team of the Enterprise standing in his bedroom sporting brightly colored birthday hats. Phichit even got Seung-gil to hold a bouquet of balloons.

Yuuri groans and tries to burrow into his blankets. Maybe if he pretends hard enough the various highly ranking Starfleet officials will all disappear and Yuuri can catch up on some much needed sleep.

“Nuh uh!” Phichit singsongs, darting a hand out with the speed of a striking viper and unearthing Yuuri from his den. “It’s your special day! No sleeping in!”

Yuuri sits up and grumbles, too groggy to be embarrassed. “I’m firing all of you and running all of the departments by myself. Get off my ship.”

“Yuuri!” Viktor laughs. “That’s no way to treat your crew! We just wanted to surprise you for your birthday!”

“What would have surprised me is if Phichit found his chill for once and _didn’t_ do something extra and humiliating.”

“Up, up!” Phichit says, tugging Yuuri further from the sweet, warm embrace of his bed. “Okay, everybody out, you’ve done your job. I need to get Yuuri into his Super Hot Spicy Katusdon Birthday Outfit now, so out!”

The crew shuffle themselves out of Yuuri’s room, calling birthday greetings as they go.

“Katsudon,” Yurio hisses, just before he leaves, “I got you this. But not because we’re friends or whatever, I just felt obligated to so– here.”

He drops a small, poorly wrapped box into Yuuri’s lap and then absconds, slamming Yuuri’s door shut on the way out. Yuuri clutches the box to his chest. He’ll treasure this forever. Then, he turns to Phichit.

“Super Hot Spicy Katsudon Birthday Outfit?”

Thirty minutes later Yuuri makes it onto the bridge wearing what he can only describe as a trainwreck of glitter and Phichit’s bad ideas. These pants are way too tight to be wearing in a workplace environment.

Of course, no one can comment on how tight his pants are because the bridge is completely deserted.

First, Yuuri panics. The first thing he thinks is that the crew has been abducted save for him and Phichit. Then Yuuri thinks that maybe everyone was so annoyed with him that they took the escape pods and fled, unable to spend another minute on the same starship as Yuuri.

Yuuri does not jump to conclusions; he straps himself to three tons of jet fuel and _launches_ himself to them.

Thankfully, Yuuri is saved from his spiral of anxiety when Viktor sneaks up behind him and scares the living hell out of him.

“I gave them the day off!” Viktor says, very loudly right next to Yuuri’s ear.

“Ah!”

Yuuri whirls around and glares.

“Sorry,” Viktor chuckles, not looking sorry at all, “but it’s your birthday! And Phichit demanded we stop over at the nearest party planet anyway, so. We haven’t had a day off in a while!”

“Vitya,” Yuuri says shrilly, looking at the empty navigation seats. “Who is piloting the ship right now?”

“I am!”

“By yourself?”

“Well, now that you’re here, no.”

Yuuri narrows his eyes.

“Was this an excuse for you to finally live out your fantasy of co-piloting a starship with me?”

“Not originally, no. We’re actually almost docked. I was going to park and then wait here to surprise you again but you showed up a little early and, well. I could use some help pulling us in.”

Yuuri sighs but he’s smiling fondly when he drops himself down into Zaira’s usual seat, Viktor in Chris’s. Together the bring in the Enterprise slowly, all eight hundred meters lengthwise of pure majesty and grace. Yuuri loves that their ship is essentially a small, travelling city. He’ll never admit it to Viktor but there’s something addictive about sitting at the helm of such a huge ship, guiding it to float safely above the planet below, a guardian made of steel and ion engines.

“You said this was a party planet?” Yuuri asks, pulling up the viewing window to peer down at the hulking mess of rock. “It doesn’t look very… party-ish.”

“Phichit assured me that they have the best clubs in the entire quadrant. C’mon, let’s get the others.”

 

Yuuri looks around hesitantly.

The club lights pulse overhead in time to the pounding rhythm of the too-loud electronic music assaulting their ears. The neon pinks and blues cast a smoky, sexy atmosphere, and Yuuri can’t help but feel pulled in despite his earlier protests. He doesn’t like clubs but somehow the desperate thrum of the music and the writhing mass of bodies on the dancefloor excites him.

“Let’s get you a drink.”

Yuuri gets pulled to the bar by Phichit, who promptly buys a round of shots for their friends and _two_ rounds for Yuuri.

“Live a little!” Phichit exclaims when Yuuri raises an eyebrow. Well– Yuuri _is_ a young man in his prime. And he never partied much in college. _And_ he’s surrounded by friends who can (mostly) be trusted to stop him from doing anything too stupid.

Yuuri takes the shots.

An hour– maybe two? maybe a few _days_ – later Yuuri finds himself squished into a table with his friends, laughing and drinking. Mostly drinking. Phichit and Christophe have Yuuri well taken care of with a never ending supply of drinks. Leo has started doing impressions of other crew members and Yuuri is laughing so hard he can’t see. Yuuri feels… good! Like really good! He loves his friends so much!

He takes a few big gulps of his drink, throwing his head back. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a flash of silver, a hint of white teeth pulled into a smile.

“Oh! Guys, I found Viktor,” he announces, tugging Phichit’s sleeve. “He’s over there with–”

Yuuri frowns because he doesn’t recognize the dark haired cute boy sitting at the bar with Viktor and Yuuri knows _everyone_ that Viktor knows, so what exactly is going on here?

Then the cute boy puts his hand on Viktor’s knee and laughs.

“Who,” Yuuri hisses, narrowing his eyes, “is _that?!_ ”

“What?” Phichit cranes his head to look. “What are you– Oh.”

Yuuri seethes. He takes another sip of his drink.

“That’s _my_ Vitya,” Yuuri slurs. “Who-Who does he think he _is_?! Sitting so close and touching my Vitya. I’m so! Phichit, Chris–– I’m so! So–!”

Yuuri struggles, the word to describe the clawing in his chest escaping him.

“Jealous?” Chris offers hesitantly.

“Yes! Wow, Chris you’re so smart! Teach me how to be smart like you!”

“Yuuri, you literally have the highest IQ of anyone sitting at this table right now. Probably the highest in this entire planet.”

“If I’m so smart then why isn’t Vitya looking at _me_ like that?” Yuuri pouts.

Chris snorts. Phichit frowns.

“What? Yuuri, love, you’re not making sense, how is Viktor looking at that guy?”

“With-! With _heart-eye emojis_! Phichit! Like the kind you use to send to that cute boy in your organic chemistry class until you found out he had a girlfriend!”

Phichit flushes bright red. Yuuri smiles. Amazing! He can count on one hand how many times he’s made Phichit blush!

“Wow,” Leo says smirking. “Drunk Yuuri is so much fun.”

“Shut up, Leo. Yuuri, sweetheart, the love of my life, the moon in my sky, I love you but you are being ridiculous. You have nothing to be jealous of. Also: you’re way too drunk, so maybe–”

“You know what you should do, Yuuri?” Chris interrupts. “You should go over there. We don’t want Viktor looking at someone else with… heart-eye emojis… now do we?”

“You’re right, Chris!” Yuuri bounces up out of his seat. He smirks, unbuttoning the first button on his shirt.

“Uh– wait, what are you–?”

“I need to go save Vitya,” Yuuri announces, running a hand through his hair, “from the evil clutches of that cute boy.”

“Um,” Phichit says. “Yuuri, wait–”

But Yuuri isn’t listening anymore. How can he listen when Viktor, _his VIktor,_ is over there being chatted up by some stranger. Yuuri knocks back the rest of his drink and climbs to his feet with more grace than someone who’s as drunk as he is has any right to. Yuuri saunters over to Viktor and his new friend, swinging his hips and ignoring Phichit and Leo’s calls for him to come back and sit down.

Yuuri knows exactly when Viktor spots him because his gaze snaps away from his companion and locks onto Yuuri. Yuuri smirks, slow and sultry.

“Hello,” Yuuri purrs, coming up behind the dark haired boy sitting across from Viktor.

“Hey there,” he says, looking back and forth between Viktor’s vaguely panicked expression and Yuuri’s own seductive one. “I’m Captain Jack Harkness. Viktor, is this a friend of yours?”

“Y-Yes!” Viktor clears his throat. “This is Yuuri Katsuki, he’s my–”

“I’m his _first officer,_ ” Yuuri smiles proudly. And then he pulls himself up to sit on Viktor’s lap.

Viktor chokes.

“Oh,” Captain Harkness says, smiling regretfully. “Ah. I see. Well, it was nice to meet you, Viktor, Yuuri.”

Yuuri smiles smugly at Captain Harkness’s retreating form. He turns his face toward Viktor who seems to have recovered from his choking episode and is now looking at Yuuri.

“W-What are you doing?”

Yuuri doesn’t answer. He winds one of his arms around Viktor’s neck to play with the short hair at the base of his skull, using the other to guide Viktor’s hands to settle on his waist. Viktor squeaks. Yuuri thinks that this is really cute. But! He cannot get distracted by how cute Viktor is! Yuuri came here on a _mission_ and that was to make Viktor Nikiforov see the error in his ways.

“Vitya,” Yuuri pouts, leaning in close to breathe the words into Viktor’s ear, “I don’t like it when you look at people who aren’t me.”

“Uh!” Viktor says intelligently. “O-Okay! I won’t.”

Yuuri pulls back and beams at him. Good! That was easier than he thought it would be.

Viktor smiles back a little hesitantly. His face is flushed a light pink that brings out his freckles. Yuuri thinks that the flush is maybe from the alcohol? That explains it! Viktor must have drank too much, making him vulnerable to the attacks of cute boys. Yuuri won’t stand for this! He must protect Viktor from the evils of cute boys and alcohol.

“Vitya,” Yuuri says, cupping Viktor’s face in his hands.

“Yes, Yuuri?” Viktor says, slightly breathless. How much did Viktor drink? Too much! He’s lucky that Yuuri came to rescue him before he did something stupid like fall in love with some oblivious, dark haired boy.

“You!” Yuuri says, pulling his face in close. “You shouldn’t drink so much!”

Viktor blinks, surprised. Then he smiles.

“ _I_ shouldn’t drink so much?” he huffs, amused.

“Yes! I don’t know if you’re aware but you have a weakness for cute dark haired boys when you’re drunk,” Yuuri announces, like it’s a scientific breakthrough. He waves vaguely in the direction that Captain Harkness had disappeared to, as if citing his sources.

“Oh, do I?” Viktor laughs.

“You do! Fortunately, _I_ came to rescue you in time,” Yuuri smiles.

“Rescue me in time? Before what?”

“Before you fell in love!”

“Ah,” Viktor smiles. “Too late.”

“Oh,” Yuuri blinks.

Viktor opens his mouth to say something else but then Yuuri feels someone tap his shoulder and he turns his face away from Viktor’s to see Phichit standing next to them with his hands on his hips.

“Phichit!” Yuuri exclaims, delighted.

“I think you’ve had enough,” Phichit says, eyes narrowed and fixed on where Viktor’s hands rest warm on Yuuri. “I’m cutting you off. Let’s go back to the ship.”

“Okay!” Yuuri nods. His mission is complete after all. He doubts that Viktor will be chatting with any other cute boys tonight, especially now that Yuuri has warned him about his fatal weakness. He needs to get back to the ship so he can do an official mission write up.

“See you later, Vitya,” Yuuri says. Before he slides off Viktor’s lap he leans in close to touch their noses together, briefly. “Boop!”

As soon as they’re outside the club Phichit turns to Yuuri and sighs.

“I _would_ lecture you on bad decisions and giving poor, unsuspecting, silver-haired captains false hope– but I doubt you’ll remember anything past the third shot in the morning.”

Yuuri frowns and tilts his head to the side, confused.

“Also, you look too much like an adorable puppy when you’re smashed like this,” Phichit sighs again, tugging Yuuri along behind him. “It never ceases to amaze me how you can go from seductive minx to fluffy cream puff in, like, two seconds.”

“Are you upset with me?” Yuuri asks, clutching onto Phichit’s hand. He doesn’t like it when people are upset with him, especially not Phichit.

“No,” Phichit says.

“Good!” Yuuri bounces. “Then can we watch a movie when we get back to the ship?”

“King and the Skater?”

“Okay!”

“And all the sequels?”

“Sure!”

But when they get back Yuuri passes out five minutes into the movie. He wakes up the next morning with a splitting headache and no memory of the night before.

* * *

 vxi.

* * *

 

A little while after the Earth crisis has been averted, they find themselves in need of supplies. Chris and Zaira pull them up to nice, quiet planet system at the edge of the galaxy. It’s the equivalent of a galactic rest-stop, complete with carbon farmers and planets full of livestock. They dock just outside of the capital, containing what looks to be the only long-range communications tower in the entire system.

“You couldn’t have taken us to a place with like… actual civilization?” Yurio grumbles. “I don’t think they even know what a starship is.”

“Don’t be rude, Yurio.” Viktor chastises. “Good job, Chris and Zaira. Smooth stop, I’m proud of you two.”

Zaira flushes at the compliment, face matching the pretty dusty pink color of her hijab. Chris waves a hand.

“It was nothing.”

Yuuri peers down at the small, idyllic planet from the viewing screen. He hovers over the shoulder of Viktor’s Captain’s chair, hand resting comfortably on his arm.

“Viktor, I’m not sure how many supplies you intend to find here,” he says frowning. “I don’t want to clear them out of their stock. We’re a pretty big crew, maybe it would have been better to wait until we got to Tellar Prime?”

“Don’t worry, we don’t actually need too many supplies. Starfleet just doesn’t want us rushing back out to the front, in case something happens and we need to be close,” Viktor murmurs, eyes flickering over to Yuuri. He nods once and then smiles.

“Alright, let’s get everything settled then.”

The crew is given a couple of days of mandatory shore leave, per Viktor’s insistence. They leave the Enterprise running with a minimal amount of people, to be switched out later. Yuuri intends to enjoy his time off. The planet, Io, and its neighboring planets are Earth-like enough, with their rolling pastures and sparkling seas. Phichit is bouncing off the walls from excitement, eager to photograph the weirdly pastel tinted scenery.

Yuuri’s in his quarters, packing an overnight bag, when Viktor knocks.

“Yuuri!” he greets brightly, bouncing lightly on his heels. He follows Yuuri inside and perches at the edge of his bed, watching Yuuri pack.

“Are you coming down with us? You gave us that whole speech about taking a break, you know you deserve one too, right?”

“Mhmm!” Viktor nods. “Actually, that’s what I came down here to ask you about. I was wondering if you wanted to come with me?”

Yuuri snorts, gesturing to his duffle bag. “I am, duh. Again: you said it’s mandatory shore leave.”

“Right!” Viktor says flushing. Yuuri thinks this is odd. Now that he thinks about it, Viktor seems weirdly nervous. It’s rare for him to be so fidgety, and rarer still to come all the way down to Phichit and Yuuri’s rooms instead of just calling Yuuri up on the comms.

“Is everything alright?”

“Everything is fine, just. Uh.”

“Spit it out, Viktor. Whatever it is, I’ve probably heard worse from Christophe.”

“No, nothing’s wrong I swear. Just– I was thinking.”

“That’s rare.”

“Hey!” Viktor wrinkles his nose. Yuuri’s sassing seems to ease his tension, though, so Yuuri counts that as a win.

“I was thinking that we haven’t seen each other, much. Recently.”

“We see each other everyday,” Yuuri points out.

“Yeah, but I mean _really_. Like we use to at the Academy. I was wondering if… maybe you wanted to go out? With me?”

“Go out?”

“We could take one of the jets and fly around, just like old times,” Viktor smiles, hair flopping into his face. “Io has some interesting moons.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “Sure. Yeah, let’s go. Let me just let Phichit know he can go on without me.”

Viktor beams, bouncing up and enveloping Yuuri in a hug.

“Great! I’ll go get Makka ready!”

Before they leave, Yuuri stops by the kitchen to pack them some lunch. They use to do this when they were students, max out their meal plans and then fly off to some remote place and bask in the Earth’s sunshine. One time, Viktor flew them all the way up north to Canada so they could watch the Northern Lights. That was the first time Yuuri told Viktor about his anxiety, talking candidly about the shadows in his head while the sky lit up above them.

Yuuri slides into Makkachin’s custom nanofiber seat like he’s coming home. He buckles up, watching Viktor go through all the usual checks.

“Ready?”

“Always,” Yuuri says with a grin. “C’mon, Viktor. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten rusty.”

Viktor raises an eyebrow. “Is that a challenge?”

“Maybe,” Yuuri says, and then they’re flying, leaving the sharp grey’s of the Enterprises hangar and speeding out into the quiet blankness yawning out before them.

“Wow,” Yuuri breathes. He cranes his head, thankful that Makkachin has a full, clear dome for the cockpit. Yuuri watches as they leave the Enterprise behind, looking regal and intimidating against the black backdrop of space. “Our ship is so beautiful.”

“You say that like it’s our kid,” Viktor says, smiling fondly. He sets a course for the nearest moon and then switches Makkachin over to autopilot, swiveling in his seat to face Yuuri.

“It might as well be our kid,” Yuuri snorts. “Our crew is literally a bunch of children.”

“I’d hope you’ll be nicer to our actual kids one day,” Viktor says dreamily. Yuuri is thoroughly confused.

“What?”

“Um,” Viktor scrambles. “N-Not that I’m thinking about kids already. I just meant– that um. You’re very strict with our crew.”

“Oh. Well, they are trained officers, they should act like it. And despite all the Team Mom jokes, you let them get away with anything.”

“Not anything.”

“Last week you caught Guang Hong and Leo starting a betting circle and all you did was lecture them a little. What were they even betting on anyway?”

“N-Nothing, it’s not important. And that’s not the point! I can’t stay mad at them, they’re so young. Like you said: literally children! I feel so old, Yuuri. When did we get so old?”

“I’m twenty-five, that’s not old. You, on the other hand, are a _dinosaur._ ”

“Twenty-nine isn’t old!”

“It is. You should start thinking about retirement. Don’t worry, we’ll find you a nice nursing home somewhere tropical with lots of hot young men for you to stare at.”

“I don’t need hot young men. And I’m not old!”

Yuuri smiles. Viktor was right: they hadn’t really hung out in a long time. It’s nice to be able to banter with Viktor without someone on the crew interrupting. They continue like this for the full hour it takes for them to arrive at Calliope, the seventh moon of nine. They touch down at the peak of a small mountain, overlooking the moon’s pockmarked, lilac surface. Viktor turns on their artificial atmosphere generator and hops out of the jet, offering a hand to Yuuri.

“Wow,” Yuuri says. “It’s so purple! Why is it so purple?”

“It’s actually not natural,” Viktor informs him. “I read the Starfleet file. It’s apparently due to chemical exposure eons ago when the system was used for manufacturing.”

“Is it safe to be here, then?”

“Yeah, it’s safe, just a weird color.”

Yuuri drinks in the sight, enjoying how Io’s other moons are also in full view. Then he realizes he’s still holding Viktor’s hand.

“Oh! Sorry,” he says, tugging his hand free. Viktor frowns and opens his mouth, but Yuuri is suddenly distracted because–

“Look, Viktor! Sunrise!”

“Actually, from this moon it’s always sunrise,” Viktor starts. He continues spouting off information from the Starfleet file, answering any of Yuuri’s questions. Yuuri is suddenly reminded of how Viktor managed to graduate from a six year flight program in only four years. Viktor teases Yuuri all the time but he’s just as big of a nerd as Yuuri is.

They spend the rest of the day flitting from moon to moon, occasionally stopping to explore some caves or talk to some locals. Yuuri thinks he likes Terpsichore the most. It’s gravity is just slightly lighter than Earth’s, meaning that when Yuuri dances around he floats a little. He quickly pulls Viktor into a light waltz, laughing as Viktor somehow still manages to be a horrible dancer. On Clio, Viktor makes Yuuri take a disgusting amount of selfies with him to post on social media later.

“You’re going to have to wait until we get back to Io,” Yuuri says, frowning at the picture where his eyes are closed. “There’s no way we have signal out here.”

“We do! I’ve been texting Chris.”

“Texting Chris? About what? Is everything alright back on the ship?”

“Everything’s fine, Yuuri,” Viktor says, blushing lightly. “I’ve just been… telling him about how much fun I’m having.”

“Oh!” Yuuri grins up at him. “I’m having fun too.”

Viktor smiles so wide Yuuri can see his dimples.

For dinner they decide to fly down to Io. There’s a fairly large city near where they docked, so they find a place selling food suitable for human consumption fairly easily. It turns out to be semi-formal but luckily their Starfleet uniforms fit the bill.

“I’ll pay,” Viktor says when they’ve finished eating, swatting Yuuri’s hand away from the check.

“What? No,” Yuuri frowns. “I’ll pay, it’s fine. You already flew us around, let me pay.”

“Yuuri, humor me,” Viktor pouts. “I was the one who asked you out.”

Yuuri knits his eyebrows together and opens his mouth to ask what that has to do with anything, but Viktor takes his confusion as an opportunity to snatch the tab and input his card information. On the way back to the ship Viktor holds Yuuri’s hand again. Yuuri blushes and reminds himself that Viktor is just a really tactile person. He doesn’t pull away.  

By the time they pull into the Enterprise’s hangar the lights have been dimmed. Viktor goes through the motions of cooling Makkachin down, making sure his jet is settled before he abruptly turns back to Yuuri in the passenger seat.

Yuuri looks over at him, soft and silvery in the low light.

“Today was really nice,” Viktor says, leaning forward.

“Yeah, I had a lot of fun.”

The watch each other for a long moment. From this close, Yuuri can see the constellations of freckles splattered across Viktor’s face. He licks his lips, Viktor’s eyes tracking the movement.

“W-We should do this again sometime.”

Yuuri nods. They continue to sit quietly, Viktor searching his face for something. Eventually, Yuuri decides to take action, otherwise they’ll be sitting there all night.

“Well, we should probably head inside,” he says, standing and stretching his limbs. “Let’s go?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah, let’s go.”

When they exit the jet, Chris is waiting for them. He’s dressed in loose, casual clothing and clutching a clipboard. As they climb out of Makkachin he greets them with a smirk on his face.

“So Yuuri,” Chris drawls. “How was your date?”

“Chris,” Viktor hisses, blushing. “Don’t tease.”

“What? What date?” Yuuri asks. “I didn’t go on a date today. I just hung out with Viktor.”

“Wait, what?” Viktor whirls to face him.

“What?” Yuuri echoes again.

“What do you mean you just– Oh,” Viktor seems to realize something. He deflates slightly, pulling on a tired smile. “Oh, I see.”

“What?” Yuuri asks a third time. He looks over to Chris who’s shooting Viktor worried glances. Yuuri feels like he’s missing something.

“It’s– nevermind,” Viktor says, his smile growing sadder by the second. Yuuri hates it when Viktor feels the need to hide his emotions from him. “I’m tired. I’m gonna go to bed, alright?”

“Alright. Good night, Viktor.”

“G’night, Captain.”

As soon as Viktor is gone Christ turns on him.

“You,” Chris frowns. “Are the single most oblivious person in the entire universe. I say this because I love you, by the way.”

“Um.”

“You’re so smart, Yuuri. Please, for the sanity of everyone on this ship, use your head.”

“I...I still don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“You and Viktor. Get your shit together, Katsuki.”

“Wait, what about me and Viktor?” Yuuri runs the last few minutes over in his head. “Oh! You thought– Oh my god. No, it’s not like that, we were just hanging out like we use to back at the Academy. You thought we were on a date?”  

“I’m not the only one who thought so,” Chris sighs, nodding his head towards the turbolift. Suddenly everything makes sense. Yuuri feels dumber than a rock. “He’s been texting me about how happy he was that you finally agreed to go out with him all day.”

“Oh, no,” he says distantly. “D-Did Viktor think–? I didn’t know it was a date! He knows that I want to though, right? He knows that I–”

“You should probably go tell him, Yuuri.”

“Right,” Yuuri says, and then he’s sprinting down the halls.

He skids to a halt just outside of the Captain’s quarters, hand poised to knock. He’s ready, he’s been sitting on these feelings since he was an eighteen year old fresh-faced Starfleet cadet. And, apparently, he’s missed all the signs that his feelings are reciprocated. He doesn’t know why he’s stopping now.

But… What if Viktor realizes that he doesn’t want to be with someone as unobservant as Yuuri? What if he’s given up? What if Yuuri ruins his perfect space family because what if Yuuri tells Viktor how he feels and Viktor rejects him? There’s no way he could still be Viktor’s second officer. He’d have to leave the Enterprise. Maybe even Starfleet. What if Yuuri ends up sad and alone on some distant rock instead of cruising through the galaxy with his crew?

Yuuri shakes his head. He’s being ridiculous, he knows. He steels himself and knocks.

“Chris, I don’t want to talk about it– Oh,” Viktor startles a bit. “Yuuri.”

“Viktor,” Yuuri breathes. “I am such an idiot.”

Viktor frowns automatically.

“Didn’t we have a talk about self deprecation. Don’t say those things about yourself.”

“No, I mean,” Yuuri laughs a little breathily. “I mean I’m an idiot because I just went on the best date of my life and I didn’t even realize it was a date.”

Viktor makes a pained expression.

“Please, don’t,” Viktor says quietly. “If you’re here to apologize because Chris is making you, don’t. I-I was getting ahead of myself. I thought you felt– it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t a date if you didn’t want it to be.”

“But I did! Want it to be a date,” Yuuri insists. He takes Viktor’s hands gently in his own. “I want to date you.”

Viktor looks at him the same way he did all those years ago in the cockpit of his jet, eyes round with hope.

“I-I really like you, Viktor.”

Yuuri steps forward carefully, watching Viktor’s face. He reaches out and cups Viktor’s face in his hand.

“Can we try again? Officially? Now that I know that you feel the same way?”

Viktor nods rapidly. He inches closer.

“Can I kiss you?” Yuuri asks, but Viktor is already leaning forward, capturing Yuuri’s lips in a kiss that could destroy entire galaxies.

“Are you okay?” Yuuri asks, pulling back after a while because he notices that Viktor is shaking. “Is– Are you uncomfortable? Do you want to stop?”

“No,” Viktor breathes out shakily, “I’ve just wanted this for a really long time. Please, continue.”

“Okay, but maybe we shouldn’t keep making out in the hallway outside your room?” Yuuri laughs lightly. “Security footage.”

“Right! Come here.”

Viktor hauls Yuuri in by the front of his uniform shirt, the door sliding shut softly behind him.

* * *

 xvii.

* * *

 

Yuuri regrets every decision he’s ever made leading up to this point.

He’s late _. Him!_ The first officer! The one in charge of arranging schedules and making sure that everyone logs a reasonable amount of work hours. Yuuri Katsuki– the youngest, most accomplished science officer in the entirety of Starfleet– is _late._   

Yuuri hustles down the corridor leading from his and Phichit’s quarters to the turbolift that will take him to the bridge. He hastily checks his datapad for updates, noting that it’s only been five minutes into his shift and already the ship is falling apart. Sometimes Yuuri feels less like the commander of a large, fully functioning starship and more like a frazzled soccer mom. He should have checked his notifications last night but, well, he was… busy. And now he’s late because he’d been reluctant to leave Viktor’s room this morning despite the time and automatic sunlight synthesizers alerting him to the fact that it was way past when he’d normally get out of bed. Yuuri blushes alone in the turbolift because apparently even his own thoughts embarrass him now.

Despite this, Yuuri can feel a foolish grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Blushing and smiling to himself, _God, what was he? A teenager?_ Pathetic. At least the only person who would ever see it is Yurio down in the security footage room.

Yuuri shakes himself out of it and steps out of the lift and onto the bridge.

“Yuuri!” Viktor greets.

Yuuri smiles and lets himself be swept up into the usual energetic atmosphere on the bridge.

After some teasing and an issue with the ship wide communication’s line that led to Viktor broadcasting their new relationship status to the _entire crew_ , after all that Yuuri finally manages to wrangle everyone into actually doing their jobs for once. With a sigh of relief Yuuri settles himself into his usual position standing by the shoulder of Viktor’s Captain’s chair.

“Good morning,” Viktor greets again, voice low and sweet and just for Yuuri.

“Morning, Vitya,” Yuuri smiles down. He turns his attention to where the viewing window has been brought up to show the blurs of light and color as they cut through space at light speed.  

Yuuri stares out at the universe and sighs in wonder.

Space: the final frontier.

Yuuri has nothing to complain about. He has his crew by his side, always a mess but never a mess that Yuuri can’t handle. He has his research. He has his best friend, boyfriend, and captain all rolled into one lovely hurricane of a human being. And– Yuuri thinks as he watches from the viewing port as stars and planets and millions of possibilities zoom past– Yuuri has his love for the unknown, just as infinite as the universe.

“Captain, Commander,” Leo calls from his communication’s station. “Starfleet just alerted us to the discovery of a new planet not too far from the planet we’re assigned to investigate now. They want to know if we want to send landing parties to both.”

“A new planet?” Viktor smiles eagerly as he swivels his Captain’s chair to look up at Yuuri, stars in his eyes and nebulas in his heart. “Well, Yuuri, what do you say? Are you up for an adventure?”

Yuuri grins like a supernova.

“Let’s boldly go.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sorry for not uploading this yesterday like i promised haha i knocked out after coming home whoops)
> 
> its been a blast!! thanks for sticking with this yall <33 
> 
> [my tumblr is here](https://somethingsnotquitewrite.tumblr.com/) if you wanna say hi !!

**Author's Note:**

> the next part of the Make My Heart Beat Out of My Chest 'verse is taking longer than anticipated so i'm posting this now bc i've been sitting on it and it was making me antsy 
> 
> next update will be in like 2 weeks (after AP exams HA i suffer)


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